





















LIBRARY OF CONGRESS. 


Chap. X- •^Copyright No.._. 


To 


UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. 




















































































* 




























































































♦ 





































































They had Both been obliged to work with 
Might and Main. 


{See page 44.) 




TOM PICKERING 


OF ’SCUTNEY 


His Experiences and Perplexities 



SOPHIE SWETT 


AUTHOR OF “ THE PONKATY BRANCH ROAD,” “ FLYING HILL FARM,” 
“ THE LOLLIPOPS’ VACATION,” “ CAPTAIN POLLY,” ETC. 


ILLUSTRATED 


BOSTON 

LOTHROP PUBLISHING COMPANY 






A • 



♦ 

Copyright, 1897, 

BY 

Lothrop Publishing Company. 


All rights reserved. 


n-wtfs' 


C J. PETERS & SON, TYPOGRAPHERS, 
BOSTON. 




CONTENTS. 


CHAPTER PAGE 

I. Macurdy Green’s Idea 9 

II. The “Managing” Editor 23 

III. Editorial Trials 38 

IV. “Our Boy’s Paper” 52 

V. Macurdy sends a Telegram 67 

VI. The Treasurer of the Foreside Club . . 81 

VII. Minty asks for a Chance 96 

VIII. The Missing Funds 115 

IX. Minty’s Sore Trial 129 

X. Emmeline Jewkes’s Quest 144 

XI. Minty Round’s Loyalty 159 

XII. The Jecks Family 175 

XIII. Pheny to the Rescue 186 

XIV. The Tremaine Prize 191 

XV. Milt’s Ambition 196 

XVI. Arabella’s Victory 200 

XVII. Luella Pickering’s Garden Party . . . 207 

XVIII. The Desk in the Tool-House 212 

XIX. Little Jason’s Secret 216 


3 


4 CONTENTS. 

CHAPTER PAGE 

XX. The Light in the Tool-House 221 

XXI. Luella Pickering’s Suspicion 227 

XXII. Uncle Dick and Mr. Jecks 232 

XXIII. Bright Hopes 236 

XXIV. The Fate of Milt’s Design 241 

XXV. Vanished Hopes 247 

XXVI. In Pursuit 252 

XXVII. On Folly Island 256 

XXVIII. Milt speaks His Mind 259 

XXIX. Back to the Shore 263 

XXX. Pheny and Her Father 267 

XXXI. A Letter from South Africa 271 

XXXII. New Hopes 275 

XXXIII. Tom’s Opinion of Things 279 


LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS. 


They had both been obliged to work with Might 

andMain Frontispiece. 

PAGE 

Minty had turned involuntarily, and given Him a 

Swift Glance 122 

Minty turned a Radiant Face toward Delilah . . 174 

Tom and Milton on Folly Island 260 



TOM PICKERING OF ’SCUTNEY. 






TOM PICKERING of ’SCUTNEY. 


CHAPTER I. 

MACURDY GREEN’S IDEA. 

M ACURDY GREEN was trudging sturdily 
along the road to the village with a heavy 
basket on his arm, and thinking of what Captain 
Levi Hawkes had said to him just before he 
mounted the stage for Hebron, — 

“The world is full of square boys in round 
holes, and round boys in square • holes, just like 
you, Macurdy. A boy has got to fit himself to 
the hole, or stir ’round lively and find a hole that 
fits him ; and he will if there’s the right stuff in 
him.” 

What Captain Levi said was worth thinking of ; 
for he was captain of a ship, and knew the world. 
He had offered to take Macurdy with him on 
board his ship ; but Macurdy knew what he wanted, 
and it wasn’t that. 

Farmer Bigsby had taken Macurdy from the 
poorhouse two years before, when he was a little 
more than twelve years old; and Farmer Bigsby, 
9 


10 


TOM PICKERING OF 'SCUTNEY. 


who was “ snug,” admitted that Macurdy had al- 
ways been “worth his keep.” 

But Macurdy wanted a better chance. He had 
decided that farming, at least after Farmer 
Bigsby’s methods, would never suit him. He said 
to himself that he should not be afraid to leave 
’Scutney Foreside and seek the place in life that 
would fit him or that he could fit, and he would go 
— if it were not for Jim! He looked wistfully 
across the fields at the ’Scutney poorhouse, stand- 
ing dingy and dilapidated on the edge of a dreary 
little pond, as he thought of Jim. “ He’s walked 
over to the Corners to get ’em,” he said to him- 
self. “ I hope he won’t have to carry anything so 
heavy. Maybe somebody will give him a lift.” 

For Jim was not strong. The circus that had 
visited ’Scutney two years and a half before had 
left Jim behind it very ill with scarlet-fever ; and he 
had been taken to the poorhouse, and had stayed 
there ever since. The fever had left him weak in 
mind as well as in body ; there were people who 
thought he had always been what was known in 
’Scutney as “underwitted.” The town authorities 
had tried in vain to discover who he was or where 
he came from. The circus company had dis- 
claimed all responsibility, declaring that he had 
run away from home to join it without the knowl- 
edge or consent of any of its members. 

Macurdy Green had become Jim’s friend and 


M A CURDY GREEN'S IDEA. II 

protector. In fact, it was a part of Macurdy’s 
theory of life that when a fellow was too weak 
to stand up for himself, it was his place to stand 
up for him. A place for himself must mean a 
place for Jim too. Macurdy was small of his age ; 
and he had to wear Farmer Bigsby’ s old clothes, 
which Mrs. Bigsby thought it well to leave unal- 
tered, both as a saving of labor and an encourage- 
ment to Macurdy to grow. This morning he had 
on a long-tailed coat that dangled around his 
heels, and he would have been completely extin- 
guished under Farmer Bigsby ’s old hat if his ears 
had not been the largest part of him. But Ma- 
curdy had a strong and resolute chin ; his nose 
was so sharp that it looked as if it had been whit- 
tled to a point, and his gray eyes were keen as 
well as honest. It was easy to see that there was 
more of Macurdy than could ever be swallowed up 
by Farmer Bigsby’s old clothes or extinguished by 
his hat. 

Macurdy began to whistle cheerily as he trudged 
along, his long-tailed coat flapping in the wind, 
and his great ears standing out from his head like 
sails set wing and wing. When a boy had thought 
things over until they began to look harder than 
they really were, Macurdy had found it a good 
plan to whistle. 

“ Where you going, ’Curdy ? ” called a voice. 

Macurdy had reached Dr. Pickering’s house, 


12 


TOM PICKERING OF ’ SCUTNEY, \ 


and Tom Pickering was sitting on the woodpile 
whittling a basket out of a nutshell. 

When he was younger, Tom had meant to be 
either a cowboy or a lion-tamer or an arctic ex- 
plorer ; but he had come to the conclusion that 
those occupations were too risky, and that there is 
nothing more satisfactory than the power that 
comes from wealth. He knew something about 
it ; for his Uncle Rufus had given him twenty-five 
dollars, which he had put into the ’Scutney bank, 
and had also given him a “motto” bank, which 
now contained seventy-seven ten-cent pieces. 

Uncle Rufus had gone away off to Texas and 
grown rich, and often sent home presents — al- 
ways useful ones. Tom had hoped that he would 
send him some money this last Christmas, and 
was disappointed to have only a printing-press and 
a fountain-pen. He had used the press to print 
some cards for his twin sister Luella, but she had 
once been to New York on a visit and scorned 
Tom’s cards because they were not engraved ; and 
he had proposed to print some handbills for the 
man who kept the Boston store, but the man had 
wanted to see some specimens of Tom’s work, and 
just because there were two or three words mis- 
spelled, and a few letters upside down, he wouldn’t 
give him any orders. 

And Tom, when he wrote to thank Uncle Rufus, 
said, “ The Presints were verry hansom, but mom 


M A CURDY GREEN'S IDEA. 


13 


ney is an Orfle Handy Thing.” Tom thought he 
had a head for business ; but of what use was a 
head for business in ’Scutney ? Nevertheless, he 
felt a little thrill of hope when he saw Macurdy 
coming. As old Uncle Sol Ramsdell at the poor- 
house said, “that there Macurdy Green has a 
headpiece of his own.” 

“ Store,” responded Macurdy concisely, in re- 
sponse to Tom’s question ; and he set his basket 
down to rest his arms. 

“ This town was a dull enough place before the 
January thaw,” growled Tom. “Now there’s no 
skating and no coasting, to say nothing of a job 
to give a fellow a start in life. What you got in 
your basket ? ” 

“ Stuff to turn at the store. There’s some win- 
ter butter that I churned yesterday. And there’s 
some stockings and mittens ; we knit ’em — her 
and me.” Macurdy nodded in the direction of the 
Bigsby farmhouse. 

“ I wouldn’t stay where folks made me knit like 
a girl,” said Tom contemptuously. “ Halves ? ” 

Macurdy shook his head sadly. “ She isn’t 
that kind, you know,” he said. “ But she let me 
knit a pair of mittens out of the middlin’s for 
Jim.” 

“ The poor-mistress ought to knit his mittens. 
He is nothing to you,” said Tom. “If you want 
to help somebody, I wish you’d help me to get out 


14 TOM PICKERING OF ' SCUTNEY. 

of this dead town, where there’s no chance for a 
fellow.” 

“ I’ll tell you what this town needs.” Macurdy 
sat down astride the chopping-block, so that his 
coat-tails extended along its whole length, and 
planted his feet firmly on the ground. “ It’s a 
good live newspaper.” 

Tom stared at him open-mouthed, and the ex- 
pression of disgust deepened on his face. “ I 
should like to know where it’s going to get one, 
and what good ’twould do me, anyway,” he said. 

“ You’ve got a printing-press, you know,” said 
Macurdy. He didn’t add that whether he was 
milking, feeding the cattle, shovelling snow, haul- 
ing wood, or knitting mittens, he had not been 
able to get that printing-press — a real press, with 
a large font of type — out of his mind since he 
first saw it. Macurdy always had his reserves. 

The nutshell that Tom was whittling dropped 
from his hand. 

“ ’Curdy, let’s do it ! ” he exclaimed, jumping 
down from the woodpile. 

“It’ll take capital,” said Macurdy; “and spell- 

• „ >> 
ing. 

“ I’ve got twenty-five dollars ; and we can look 
in the dictionary. I always thought a fellow was 
wasting his time learning to spell,” said Tom 
easily. 

Macurdy Green shook his head doubtfully. 


M A CURDY GREEN'S IDEA. 


15 


“ I wish I could get more’n three months’ 
schooling in a year. I’m awful shaky on gram- 
mar,” he said dejectedly. 

Tom’s manner lost something of its easy assu- 
rance. “ I’m stuck there too,” he admitted can- 
didly. “ Grammar is for girls, anyhow. I said 
them instead of those the other night when we 
had company, and Luella said she thought she 
should sink through the floor.” (Tom, I regret 
to say, delivered himself of this last clause in a 
thin falsetto key, in mimicry of Luella.) 

“ Grammar comes high, but you have to have 
it,” said Macurdy seriously. 

“ I’ll tell you what we could do,” said Tom, after 
a moment of deep reflection. “ My sister Luella 
is great on grammar and spelling. We needn’t 
let her have her name in the paper, but she can 
look over the — the — patterns.” 

“ The proofs,” suggested Macurdy. 

“ Yes ; that’s what they call ’em. You know all 
about it, don’t you ? How did you find out ? ” 
demanded Tom eagerly. 

“ I always wanted to do it. I don’t know how 
such ideas get into a fellow’s head. Uncle Sol 
Ramsdell at the poorhouse used to pick up every 
newspaper he could find, and some summer board- 
ers used to send him some after they went home, 
and I used to read them to him. Jim knows a lot 
about it too. I think his father was an editor.” 


1 6 TOM PICKERING OF 'SCUTNEY. 

“ More likely a circus clown,” growled Tom. 

He didn’t at all approve of Macurdy’s intimacy 
with that Jim. They had secrets, too, — Macurdy 
and Jim, — which they never revealed to him. 

“I only have my chores to do after school now, 
except Saturday, and I’ll do more than half the 
work. I ought to, if you furnish the capital,” 
said Macurdy. “ You’ll be editor and proprietor, 
and I’ll be assistant editor,” he continued mod- 
estly. “ We’ll make a paper that will grow up 
with us and with the town.” 

Tom’s first impulse was to say that they would 
share the glory of editorship equally ; but it oc- 
curred to him suddenly that “ Thomas F. Pick- 
ering, Editor and Proprietor,” would look very 
imposing at the head of the sheet. And it was 
Macurdy’s own proposition. 

Macurdy stifled a little sigh. Perhaps he had 
hoped that Tom would insist upon his having more 
of the honors ; but Macurdy understood the claims 
of capital. 

He jumped up suddenly from the chopping- 
block. “ I must hurry up,” he said. “ I’ve got 
to get some molasses and some ginger. We’re 
going to make dried-pumpkin pies.” Macurdy 
made a slight grimace, but he drew himself up 
with a soldierly bearing in his long-tailed coat. 

“If she only won’t make me wash the dishes 
with her apron on ! That hurts,” he said. 


M A CURDY GREEN'S IDEA. 1 7 

“You have an awful hard time, ’Curdy,” said 
Tom sympathetically. “We’ll put a piece in the 
paper about her” (the pronouns “she” and “her” 
were used to darkly designate Mrs. Bigsby), “and 
about the schoolmaster, and everybody that we 
don’t like.” 

But these satisfactions of journalism did not 
strike Macurdy favorably. 

“ I think that’s mean, hitting folks when they 
haven’t got a chance to hit back,” he said, shaking 
his head gravely. “ Besides, it isn’t business to 
make people mad. You’ve got to suit everybody 
in a paper like that. And we must get advertise- 
ments, you know, and make it pay.” Macurdy 
was hurrying off now with his basket, under 
pressure of the recollection of the dried-pump- 
kin pies. 

“ Macurdy is business. I’ve got just the right 
one to help me on that paper,” reflected Tom. 
“ But I’m not going to have that Jim putting his 
finger into the pie ! 

“ Stop when you come back,” he called after 
Macurdy. “I’ll get father to let me take my 
twenty-five dollars out of the bank ; Uncle Rufus 
said I was to do whatever I liked with it. And 
I’ll talk to Luella about the grammar.” 

It happened that Luella came to the door just 
then with her friend Polly Rawson, who had been 
calling on her. The girls were chattering about 


1 8 TOM PICKERING OF ’SCUTNEY. 

some fancywork that they were making for a 
church fair. 

“ What are you going to do for the fair ? ” Polly 
Rawson called to Tom. “There is so little that 
a boy can do,” she added condescendingly. “ But 
we are going to have home-made candy for our 
table, Luella and I ; and we’ll let you crack the 
nuts.” 

Crack the nuts, indeed ! Tom growled a half- 
inaudible refusal, to which they didn’t even listen. 
Polly Rawson was almost a year younger than he 
was ; but she had begun to put on as many airs as 
if she were twenty, especially since she had her 
long braid fastened up in a little bob, and had 
written a composition that the teacher read be- 
fore the whole school. Tom wished he were not 
obliged to ask a girl to help about the paper. Per- 
haps it really would have been better for a fellow 
to give his mind to spelling and grammar, he 
thought regretfully. 

Luella had seated herself at the piano, and was 
practising, counting one, two, three, four, with 
diligent monotony when Tom followed her into 
the house. 

“See here, Luella,” — Tom shut the parlor door 
carefully behind him, — “ it’s an awful secret, but 
we’re going to publish a paper, Macurdy Green 
and I, and we’re going to let you help a little.” 

“One, two, three, four,” went on Luella, with 


MA CURDY GREEN'S IDEA. 


19 


provoking indifference. “ A paper ! you and Ma- 
curdy Green ! — one, two, three, four — you don’t 
know a thing about it ! ” 

Luella allowed her fingers to fall from the keys 
with this climax of frankness. 

“ We know all about it ; Macurdy Green and I 
are the kind that look into things. We only want 
you to look over the patterns — the proofs — and 
correct the mistakes. There always are some mis- 
takes, because editors have more important things 
to think of than grammar and spelling.” 

“ It would be a funny paper with your spelling 
and Macurdy Green’s ! ” she said. “ Macurdy is 
smart ; everybody says so, but he never had a 
chance.” (There was an accent on the pronoun 
which Tom felt to be unpleasantly personal.) 
“He’s awfully sharp at a bargain. You’d better 
let him manage the paper.” 

“ I guess I’m capable of managing my own 
paper,” said Tom, resenting the implied doubt of 
his abilities. 

“ I think you’ll find that queer boy at the poor- 
house will have something to do with it if Macurdy 
Green has,” said Luella. “He and Macurdy are 
very thick. They keep something in Mr. Bigsby’s 
old granary, and nobody can get into the granary 
or find out what it is. Some people think it is 
money ; that boy wouldn’t know any better than 
to steal, and Macurdy thinks so much of him that 


20 


TOM PICKERING OF \ SCUTNEY , i 


he would keep him from getting found out. And 
some people think it’s a pony that he hid away in 
the woods when the circus was here, and before 
he was sick. Very queer noises have been heard 
there.” 

“You and Polly Rawson know such a lot of 
wonderful things,” said Tom scornfully. 

The truth was, that it was a sensitive point with 
Tom that Macurdy did not take him into his con- 
fidence about the mysterious occupants of that old 
granary, which were reported to be almost every- 
thing imaginable, from bags of gold to the queer 
little animals which had performed such wonderful 
tricks at the circus. Tom then and there resolved 
to tell Macurdy, pleasantly but firmly, that before 
he became connected with his newspaper enter- 
prise he must share with him the secret of that 
granary. 

“There’s always a managing editor and a lite- 
rary editor,” continued Luella, returning to the 
subject of the paper. “Polly Rawson’s uncle 
owns a paper, and Polly knows all about it. We 
talked it over when we thought of having a paper 
for the fair. You can be the publisher, Macurdy 
Green the managing editor, and I’ll be the literary 
editor.” 

“A lot you will!” cried Tom, with scornful 
roughness. 

“ Provided that my name is printed on the 


MA CURDY GREEN'S IDEA. 


21 


paper in very large letters, that I have as many 
copies as I like to give away, and that I can put in 
my friends’ pieces. But of course you’ll be glad 
to have those ; for Nell Tapley writes beautiful 
poetry, and Abby Atwood can make up conun- 
drums and funny things that you would think 
came out of a grown-up paper, and Polly can write 
fairy stories. Don’t you remember her composi- 
tion, ‘ The Enchanted Pumpkin Seed ’ ? ” 

“ Haven’t you got cheek!” cried Tom hotly. 
“ Do you think we want a lot of girly things like 
that ? It’s going to be a very different sort of 
paper from that, I can tell you ! Of course it 
will only be a boys’ paper now, but we expect it 
to grow up with us and with the town,” — Tom 
quoted unblushingly from Macurdy, really feeling 
as if that had been his own idea, — “ and that 
by and by it will be the paper of the county. I 
can tell you such things have happened. There’s 
a boy in New York ” — 

“ It depends a great deal upon the sort of boy 
he is. I hope it won’t prove like the poultry or 
the asparagus business.” And after these “mean 
little flings,” as Tom called them, — for he had 
made disastrous failures in the two occupations 
which she mentioned, — Luella began again to 
play, and to count her provoking one, two, three, 
four, as if the great enterprise in which Tom had 
asked her help were of no account whatever. 


22 


TOM PICKERING OF ’ SCUTNEY. 


“ I guess we can get along without girls/’ he 
said loftily. But even as he uttered this proud 
boast Tom’s heart sank at the thought of the 
gibes and sneers that would follow any errors in 
grammar or spelling that might appear in the 
paper. 

“ That Luella ! ” Tom grumbled. She once had 
to have apples and oranges divided into sections 
over and over again before she could get fractions 
into her head ; she couldn’t throw a ball straight 
to save her life, nor drive a nail without pounding 
her fingers black and blue ; but she knew just 
which way the “ i ” and the “ e ” went in “ de- 
ceive ” and “believe” and all such dreadful words, 
and when to say “whom” instead of “who,” and 
she said “lie down” to Towser, instead of “lay 
down,” as a natural boy did, just as easily as she 
breathed. 

Tom felt that it was a world in which things 
were very unfair ; and he turned away from Luella 
and her one, two, three, four with a heavy sigh. 

Macurdy must think of a way in which they 
could make that paper the great success that they 
meant to have it — in time the paper of the county 
— without girls. 


THE “ MANAGING ” EDITOR. 


23 


CHAPTER II. 

THE “ MANAGING ” EDITOR. 

“ T THINK we’d better propitiate ’em,” Ma- 

J- curdy said, shaking his head sagely, when 
Tom told him of Luella’s exactions, and called 
upon him to think of some way by which the paper 
could be made correct in grammar, and yet dis- 
pense with the services of girls. 

“You can’t leave girls out of your calc’lations,” 
he continued seriously. “ They kind of hang to- 
gether ; and if you get them all down on the paper, 
why, you might as well not have any paper — 
that’s, all.” 

“ They’ll want to fill it full of compositions ; the 
kind they tie up with blue ribbons, all about 
flowers and little brooks,” said Tom dejectedly. 

“ It ought to be easy to manage girls ; we’ll 
manage ’em,” said Macurdy. 

But Tom shook his head gloomily. “You 
haven’t got a sister,” he said. 

It was finally arranged that Luella should be al- 
lowed to call herself the “ literary editor,” in very 
small type, and that everybody, “girls ’n’ all,” 


24 


TOM PICKERING OF 'SCUTNEY. 


as Macurdy said, should be at liberty to send in 
contributions, but that nothing should appear in 
the paper without the consent of “the whole edi- 
torial staff.” (That phrase was also Macurdy’s.) 

“ She can’t complain of that ; they can’t any of 
’em complain,” said Macurdy, with a modest sense 
of being equal to the occasion. 

Tom didn’t feel quite so sure of Luella’s “sweet 
reasonableness,” but the readiness with which 
Macurdy took hold of difficulties was cheering. 

The question of the paper’s name came up next. 
Tom wished to call it The War Whoop , or The 
Boomerang , or at least The ' Scutney Boom; he 
thought it should be a name that would make 
people understand that they were “up and com- 
ing.” But Macurdy thought those names sounded 
more like a paper that was going to stir up things 
just for a while, thap. one that was meant to last. 
An ordinary “grown-up name” was much better; 
he liked The Journal , or The News , or The Sun , or — 

“Or The Mail!' suggested Tom. 

And Macurdy thought that name the best of 
all, because it sounded as if news had come from 
the world outside as well as from ’Scutney. 

Tom gave up his striking names the more 
readily because he had thought of the best one of 
the “grown-up ” kind ; it didn’t look well for Ma- 
curdy Green to think of everything when he was 
the proprietor of the paper. 


THE “MANAGING” EDITOR. 25 

“ I’m 'going to send to Hebron for the paper 
and ink, Monday,” he said. “ Father says I may. 
And he says we may hav,e our old tool-house 
for a publishing-house and office ; there are two 
rooms, you know. I wish it was nearer the 
street.” 

Macurdy shook his head decidedly. “ Plenty of 
people will come. Editors don’t like to ’be both- 
ered.” 

“ We’ll have the old building painted ” — began 
Tom. 

“Next spring,” interrupted Macurdy. “We 
must be sure that the paper is going to pay 
first.” 

“You’re the greatest fellow to think about mak- 
ing things pay,” said Tom. “ But I should like 
to know how it pays you to ‘spend so much time 
on that Jim!” he went on in an aggrieved tone. 
“ He was on the wagon with you and Mr. Bigsby 
coming home from the store, and that was why 
you couldn’t stop, I s’pose. You’d got to help him 
take care of that bundle he was carrying.” 

Tom had a well-developed bump of curiosity, 
and he thought he ought to know what there was 
in that bundle which Macurdy had been helping 
Jim to hold on to as the wagon jolted along. 
When he reached Farmer Bigsby’s that afternoon, 
he had found Jim just locking the door of the 
granary, and thrusting the key hastily into his 


26 


TOM PICKERING OF 'SCUTNEY 


pocket ; that queer-looking bundle was probably 
locked up there. Tom wouldn’t ask what it was ; 
he had asked what there was in that granary too 
many times already, only to receive an evasive re- 
ply. But he sternly resolved that he would very 
soon make Macurdy understand that between a 
publisher and his editor there must be no secrets. 

Macurdy’ s freckled face grew red up to the rim 
of Farmer Bigsby’s old hat. “Jim hasn’t got 
anybody but me,” said he. “He and I are just 
alike ; we haven’t got anybody but each other. 
And he knows a lot more than folks think he 
does, if his mind does trouble him some. He’ll 
help us about the paper.” 

“ I don’t think that would do,” said Tom, in 
quick alarm. Who knew but Jim would expect 
to have his name on the paper as some kind of 
editor? “He isn’t what you could call very smart, 
anyway.” Tom tried to speak delicately, for Ma- 
curdy was sensitive. 

“ If he should write what he knows about ani- 
mals, I guess you’d want it in the paper,” said 
Macurdy stoutly. “ There’s nobody ’round here 
that knows so much.” 

“That’s because he belonged to a circus com- 
pany, I s’pose,” said Tom. 

But Macurdy shook his head. “ I don’t think 
he had belonged to it for long,” he said. “ He 
doesn’t seem to remember much about it. And 


THE “ MANAGING ” EDITOR . 27 

the circus people said he had run away from 
home and joined them only a little while before 
they got here.” 

“ Some people think he’s rich, and that he’s 
hiding money ’round,” hazarded Tom, glancing at 
Macurdy. 

“That’s a likely story, isn’t it?” said Macurdy 
scornfully. “ I wish I knew where he came from,” 
he went on anxiously. “ I’m afraid they’ll send him 
to the State poor-farm in the spring. It doesn’t 
belong to ’Scutney to take care of him, and the 
selectmen are talking about it. He doesn’t have 
a very bad time here, if he does have to make up 
beds and wash dishes. I used to wash dishes for 
him ; that’s how I learned to do it so well that 
Mrs. Bigsby makes me do it all the time.” And 
Macurdy heaved a long sigh, from a consciousness 
that good deeds do not always bring the reward 
that one might expect. 

“I wish Jim could find his own folks, or that 
you would stop trying to be own folks to him,” 
grumbled Tom. “ I’m afraid it’s going to be a 
hindrance to that paper.” 

“ A fellow has to have more than one thing on 
his mind in this world,” said Macurdy with an 
anxious glance towards the old granary. 

Tom made up his mind that it was time for a 
serious remonstrance with Macurdy ; but just as 
he had braced himself against the pig-pen and pre- 


28 


TOM PICKERING OF 'SCUTNEY. 


pared to begin, girls’ voices were heard eagerly 
calling, “Tom Pickering!” and Nelly Lamphier 
and Bobsy Briggs came running into the barn. 

Tom felt a sudden regret that he had allowed 
himself to talk about the prospective paper to 
Halsey Briggs and Dick Lamphier on his way 
over to see Macurdy. Some brothers had to run 
to their sisters with everything, he thought indig- 
nantly. 

“ We want to put advertisements into the paper 
right away, the very first number ! ” announced 
Bobsy. 

“ If there’s a good circulation,” interposed Nelly 
Lamphier. “ Uncle Albert said we mustn’t prom- 
ise any ads — that’s what he called them, ads — 
unless you can guarantee a good circulation.” 

“ Girls again!” ejaculated Tom, under his 
breath. 

“ I want to advertise my three Angora kittens,” 
pursued Bobsy, who had a less prudent mind than 
her friend. “ They must give five dollars apiece 
and love them, and six for the white one ; and 
shall I pay nails, or pins, or cookies ? I can pay 
a large doughnut-boy — or even twins.” 

Bobsy evidently felt a great sense of importance 
from her ability to make so munificent an offer, 
and she was much astonished at Macurdy’s laugh 
and Tom’s scowl. 

“ Nails and doughnut-boys, indeed ! ” cried Tom 


THE “ MANAGING ” EDITOR . 29 

scornfully — as scornfully as if he had not him- 
self done much business with such commodities 
as legal tender. “ If you want to advertise your 
kittens you can pay so much a line — so much 
money. I don’t know whether we want to take 
such advertisements ” — 

“ Oh, yes, yes ! ” hastily interposed Macurdy, who 
had an eye to business. “Twenty-five cents for 
one insertion, thirty-seven cents for two ; you’d 
better take two. If you only sold one kitten, it 
would pay you to advertise. You can’t expect, 
you know, to sell your kittens for five dollars 
apiece, and pay us only doughnut-boys for adver- 
tising them.” 

Bobsy pulled her worsted Tam o’Shanter down 
over her stubby tow-colored bangs, as if it were a 
thinking-cap, and reflected deeply. 

“This is real business,” explained Macurdy. 
“ We expect to get up a paper that will grow up 
with us.” 

Bobsy and her friend looked at each other. 

“We didn’t think of its being a truly paper. 
You’re only boys,” said Nelly Lamphier. 

“ Have you got truly kittens to advertise ? ” 
asked Tom, with what he felt to be great acute- 
ness. “ Or are they only those stuffed things that 
the girls make ? ” 

“ They’re real, live kittens ! ” said Bobsy indig- 
nantly. “ And I like it better to advertise them 


30 


TOM PICKERING OF ’ SCUTNEY 


in a real paper,” she added. “ I’m awful sick of 
make-believes. But I can’t pay until the kittens 
are sold.” 

“ Maybe you think we’re like those medical fel- 
lows that advertise ‘no cure, no pay,’ ” said Tom 
angrily. 

“ We’ve got to propitiate ’em,” whispered Ma- 
curdy. 

“ I can pay when I open my bank. It will open 
when there are ten dollars in it, and there are fif- 
teen cents now,” said Bobsy hopefully. 

“ I think we can make an arrangement that will 
be satisfactory, Miss Briggs,” said Macurdy po- 
litely. “And we shall be open for business in our 
— our counting-room and editorial sanctum, on Dr. 
Pickering’s grounds, by the last of next week.” 

Bobsy was so greatly abashed by this ceremoni- 
ous speech that she slowly drew off her mitten 
and thrust her thumb into her mouth, while Nelly 
Lamphier stared at Macurdy for a moment, and 
then drew her friend away. 

“ ’D you see me manage ’em ? ” demanded Ma- 
curdy. 

“ They’re only little ones : wait until you have 
to manage the big ones ; then we’ll see who’s the 
managing editor,” said Tom. 

“ I don’t expect that paper is going to be pub- 
lished without any difficulties,” said Macurdy seri- 
ously. “ That isn’t the way of this world. But I 


THE “ MANAGING ” EDITOR. 


31 


like to pounce right on to difficulties, and get the 
upper hand of ’em. It makes a fellow feel as if 
he was somebody.” 

“ You can’t pounce on to girls and — and crazy 
folks.” 

Tom had caught sight of Jim coming towards 
the barn, and felt vaguely irritated. He said to 
himself that he wished he ever could come to see 
Macurdy without having to see that Jim. 

Jim stopped at the granary door and tried it, 
with an anxious look ; then he went to the win- 
dow, and tried to peer in at the sides of the paper 
curtain which had been roughly nailed up. 

“It’s all right, Jim,” called Macurdy. And Jim 
turned and came towards the boys with an expres- 
sion of childish satisfaction replacing the anxiety 
on his face. 

“All right,” he repeated, “snug and warm.” 
And then he said something in a low tone to Ma- 
curdy. It was about sleeping in the granary, or 
having a burglar-alarm ; or so Tom thought, from 
the few words that came to his ears. He didn’t 
mean to listen, but he could hardly help pricking 
up his ears a little at that. Macurdy evidently 
did not care to have any private conversation with 
Jim in Tom’s presence. 

“It’s all right, all right, Jim,” he repeated re- 
assuringly. “And the paper is all right too. 
We’re going to print the first number next week.” 


32 


TOM PICKERING OF ’SCUTNEY. 


“ So Macurdy has had to go and tell Jim all 
about the paper already,” thought Tom, with 
great disgust. 

Macurdy had his arm around the boy, and Jim 
was looking at him with wistful eyes. 

“ I’ll write something for the paper,” he said 
eagerly. “ I can write now — just so you can 
make it out.” 

Jim had evidently once been able to read and 
write, but the fever had left him so vacant men- 
tally that he had to begin over again with the 
little children. There were rough boys in ’Scut- 
ney, who had gibed and sneered at Jim for this, 
and Macurdy had been obliged to thrash them. 

“ Local items and general news are what we 
want. And I suppose we shall copy a good deal 
from other papers,” said Tom, with a view to dis- 
couraging Jim. 

“ I’ll write you all about the Queen of Sheba,” 
said Jim eagerly. “All I can remember,” he 
added, with a touch of patient dejection. “ I had 
forgotten all about her until that day that I went 
to Hebron with you and Mr. Bigsby, ’Curdy. She 
wasn’t in the circus — do you think she was, 
’Curdy ? Where do you suppose I was when I 
had her ? ” There was a pathetic wistfulness in 
his voice, and he laid his hand pleadingly on 
Macurdy’s shoulder. 

“Never mind, old fellow; you’ll remember all 


THE “ MANAGING ” EDITOR . 33 

about it when you get strong,” said Macurdy 
cheerfully, but rather gruffly, because of a lump 
in his throat. 

“ We can’t have Bible stories, you know ; it 
isn’t going to be a Sunday-school paper,” said 
Tom ; and he said it the more roughly because he 
was afraid his voice was a little husky : he wasn’t 
going to be a softy about that fellow. 

“ Write it, Jim,” said Macurdy. “ Of course 
we can’t put everything into the paper, but we’ll 
see, we’ll see ! ” 

It appeared to Tom that Macurdy was taking a 
great deal upon himself about that paper. He’d 
better remember whose money was going to pay 
for it ! 

Jim went off, and Tom was preparing to speak 
his mind to Macurdy about his encouraging Jim to 
write for the paper, when Teddy Norcross and 
Orrin Seaver came running up to the barn door. 

“ I say, Tom! who is going to report the ball 
games for your paper ? There’s the Hebrons and 
the ’Scutneys next Saturday, and ” — 

“ Jolly! I never thought of that!” exclaimed 
Tom. 

But Macurdy interrupted him. “We shall do 
those things ourselves — with such help as our 
friends want to give us,” he explained. 

“ I want a new bat, and I thought maybe I could 
earn it that way,” said Teddy Norcross in a dis- 


34 


TOM PICKERING OF 'SCUTNEY. 


appointed tone. “ I’m just the fellow. And ten- 
nis games in summer ” — 

“ You see, a ’Scutney paper can’t afford to hire 
reporters in the beginning, anyway,” said Ma- 
curdy. ‘‘But we’re sure that every — every pub- 
lic-spirited citizen will want to help us all he 
can.” 

“ You don’t want any assistant editors, or any- 
thing, that would work cheap, do you ? ” persisted 
Teddy, who had the reputation of being business- 
like and thrifty. 

“Not yet, anyway; if we should want any” — 
murmured Macurdy politely. 

“ We heard that girls were going to b’long,” 
said Orrin Seaver with a somewhat contemptuous 
accent. 

“ It’s the fashion. We want to keep up with 
the times ; you read about women in journalism, 
you know. And we think they’ll come in handy 
about — about the fashions and — and crochet- 
work — a girl’s corner, or something like that,” 
said Macurdy, delicately ignoring the sensitive 
points of grammar and spelling. 

“You talk as if ’twas a grown-up paper,” said 
Orrin Seaver a little sulkily. 

“ We mean it to be a growing-up paper,” said 
Macurdy. “We expect it to grow up ” — 

“We mean business, and we’re going to run it 
ourselves,” said Tom, who felt that Macurdy, with 


THE “ MANAGING ” EDITOR. 35 

his fine phrases, had kept him in the background 
all too long. 

There was more than one boy in ’Scutney that 
day who felt it to be an unkind fate that Tom 
Pickering owned a printing-press, and was there- 
fore Macurdy’s partner instead of himself. 

“ I tell you what, Macurdy,” said Tom, as they 
separated, planting himself firmly on the ground, 
and holding his head very high, “I’ll get a lot 
more type. That paper is going to be a Big 
Thing ! ” 

Luella, for her part, did not keep on counting 
one, two, three, four after Tom left her. Although 
she had treated Tom’s project with so little re- 
spect, no sooner had he gone than she whisked 
down-stairs to tell Delilah all about it. Delilah 
was really the housekeeper, though nominally the 
“ hired girl,” in Dr. Pickering’s family. She was 
a privileged character, and felt it her duty to talk 
much to Luella about the influence she ought to 
have over Tom. Then Luella ran, all out of 
breath, over to Polly Rawson’s, to see what Polly 
would think of the paper. “ Delilah says it will 
be a great opportunity for us to take some of the 
didoes out of the boys and elevate them,” she said, 
after she had unfolded the great scheme to the 
attentive Polly. 

“ Pm sure they need it,” said Polly plaintively. 
“ I wish somebody would do that to our Bing. I 


36 TOM PICKERING OF 'SCUTNEY. 

think we’d better help them, Luella. And I’ll let 
them print ‘ The Enchanted Pumpkin Seed.’ ” 

It was after nine o’clock that night — and nine 
o’clock was ’Scutney bedtime — when Tom, on his 
way to bed, answered a knock at the back door 
and found Macurdy. 

“ I couldn’t come before,” he said breathlessly. 
“ I’ve had to chop mince-meat and knit a stent ; 
she don’t know I’ve come now. I want you to let 
Jim put his piece into the paper. It will do him 
such a lot of good in his mind. And so I wanted 
you to know that the Queen of Sheba is only a 
turkey — a big white turkey.” 

“ I didn’t know we were going to print a paper 
to help people’s minds,” said Tom sulkily. “And 
I don’t like .such a lot of mysteries!” Tom 
glanced meaningly across the field towards the old 
granary, which stood out white in the moonlight, 
although it was weather-worn and gray. 

“ It’s awful cold, isn’t it ? ” said Macurdy, his 
gaze following Tom’s anxiously. “And if Jim 
wants to put anything into the paper about Sarah 
Loud, I think we’d better let him. It will be 
awful interesting.” 

“ If she’s anybody that ’Scutney folks know,” 
said Tom — for he didn’t want to quarrel with 
Macurdy. 

“ I tell you we’re going to do great things with 
that paper, Tom,” said Macurdy evasively, as he 


THE “ MANAGING " EDITOR. 


3 7 


pulled his woollen comforter up over his ears and 
trudged away. 

“ I s’pose Sarah Loud is somebody that they’ve 
got shut up in the old granary,” said Tom to him- 
self, with what he thought was sarcasm, as he went 
off to bed. 


38 


TOM PICKERING OF 'SCUTNEY. 


CHAPTER III 


EDITORIAL TRIALS. 



HE old tool-house was painted, after all, before 


K it was thought fit to serve as the publishing- 
house and editorial sanctum of The 'Scutney Mail. 
Macurdy Green, like Mrs. John Gilpin, might have 
a prudent mind ; but the literary editor of the 
Maily Miss Luella Pickering, wanted “to have 
things look nice.” Old Uncle Sol Ramsdell, who 
was devoted to newspapers, offered to do the 
painting without other pay than an occasional copy 
of the Mail ; and Tom, who had an inexperienced 
belief in the “ stretchability ” of twenty-five dol- 
lars, joyfully purchased the paint. 

It looked very smart and shining when it was 
done ; but by the time the imposing gilt-lettered 
sign, The * Scutney Mail> was hung over the door, 
Tom had spent all his twenty-five dollars, and 
broken open his “ motto ” bank, with the motto, 
which had sprung out the last time he put money 
in, staring him in the face, “ Small beginnings 
make great endings.” 

Macurdy, who believed in small beginnings, 


EDITORIAL TRIALS. 


39 


strongly disapproved of this recklessness; but he 
could only agree to Tom’s often-repeated and 
frank assertion that “it wasn’t his twenty-five 
dollars.” 

It was arranged that the proceeds should be 
evenly divided between the editors after a certain 
percentage on Tom’s money had been deducted. 

The ’Scutney tradesmen, who were disposed at 
first to regard the paper as boys’ play, — one of the 
“make-believes ” of Bobsy Briggs’s dislike, — ended 
by allowing the Mail to print their advertisements 
at a very low rate ; and a concert company that 
gave an entertainment in the Town Hall not only 
advertised in the paper, but had its programmes 
and circulars printed by that press. 

This success thrilled Macurdy’s practical busi- 
ness soul. But it was the beginning of a danger. 

Bing Rawson, who was Polly Rawson’s brother, 
wanted to have his finger in the editorial pie. 
That was what Tom told Macurdy, warningly, in 
the very beginning. Bing Rawson was only thir- 
teen, and a little fellow who had red cheeks and 
baby-blue eyes, and looked like a cherub ; but it 
was the general verdict that Bing was full of mis- 
chief. Although not devoted to his books, Bing 
had very quick perceptions and a retentive mem- 
ory, and was one of the few boys to whom spelling 
and grammar seemed to “ come natural.” And it 
was Bing’s ambition to supplant the literary editor. 


4 o 


TOM PICKERING OF 'SCUTNEY. 


Bing was very apt to come gallantly to the front 
when anything was happening in ’Scutney. It 
was he who enjoyed the proud privilege of touch- 
ing off the cannon at the Fourth of July celebra- 
tion ; it was he who had a complimentary ticket to 
the circus, and sat well up in front, and on one 
never-to-be-forgotten occasion rode in the chariot 
with the Fat Lady ; it was he who spoke the long- 
est “piece” at school exhibitions and Sunday- 
school festivals, and who acted the part of the 
page in the Village Improvement Society’s play. 

Bing’s great friend and ally was Derrick Croome, 
a much larger boy than he, and inclined to rougher 
ways and more serious mischief. The Rawson 
family, from Grandma Rawson down to Polly, 
made a constant effort to keep Bing from associ- 
ating with Derrick Croome ; but so far it had been 
unsuccessful. 

When the printing business began, Bing thought 
that the least they could do would be to let him 
help at that ; when that privilege was denied him, 
— although his sister Polly was the intimate friend 
of the literary editor, and expected to have her 
story, “The Enchanted Pumpkin Seed,” printed in 
the paper, — he demanded to be allowed to distrib- 
ute the concert circulars and programmes — work 
for which the contract had been taken by the 
printers. Derrick Croome enforced this demand 
by threatening to “ punch their heads ” and knock 


EDITORIAL TRIALS. 


41 


their partly set up paper into “ pi.” (Derrick’s 
father had been a printer in the city where they 
came from.) And another and even worse threat 
Derrick Croome, who was Mrs. Bigsby’s nephew, 
added to these terrifying ones : — 

“ I’ll tell my aunt what you keep in the old 
granary, you and that foolish fellow. She’s going 
to put her foot down on that granary business, 
anyhow, and on the paper too, if I tell her what 
I’m going to if Bing don’t get his rights.” 

Macurdy calmly shut the door in the face of 
the enemy. It was not that the last direful threat 
did not move him ; on many a cherished hope and 
plan of his had Mrs. Bigsby put down her foot. 
If any threat could make him flinch, it was that 
one of turning Mrs. Bigsby’s attention afresh to 
his occupancy of the old granary. But Macurdy 
was not of the flinching kind, and that was all 
there was about it. 

“ They’re an awful pair,” said Tom dejectedly. 
“ Bing isn’t so bad, and he wouldn’t dare to do 
much, but with Derrick Croome to back him ” — 
Tom shook his head dismally. It was a dismal- 
looking head, for mumps had developed on both 
sides at once, and Tom was not in a state to take 
cheerful views of things. 

“ I guess we sha’n’t be bullied into giving any 
fellow a job,” said Macurdy, busily setting type. 
This was the third issue of the paper; and Jim’s 


42 TOM PICKERING OF 'SCUTNEY. 

story of the Queen of Sheba was to appear, and 
Macurdy was especially anxious that there should 
be no mistakes in that. “ Besides, we promised 
the job to little Tim Golden, who wants to buy 
shoes for the twins. When a boy has to help his 
mother that’s a widow — Those threats won’t 
come to anything, you’ll see,” added Macurdy, as 
he worked away. 

And perhaps the threats might not have 
amounted to anything if something had not hap- 
pened to increase Derrick Croome’s wrath against 
the editors and the proprietor of The ’ Scutney 
Mail. It happened that very day, after Bing 
Rawson and Derrick had walked slowly away, 
engaged in low and confidential conversation, that 
little Lizzie Magill, who lived with her old grand- 
mother and her lame brother Patsy in a lane off 
the river *oad, came running in, tearful and breath- 
less, to beg that “ a piece ” about Derrick Croome’s 
dog might be put into the paper. 

“ We’re thet in drid of him that we hardly dares 
to stir out of the house,” said Lizzie. “ Me grand- 
mother is afther havin’ her petticoats torn, and she 
bringin’ home the washin’ ; and little Patsy does be 
that frightened since he was bit by him, that we 
can’t get him to go to school at all, at all. And 
the fairther himself bein’ s’lectman, and ownin’ the 
bit uv a place over our heads, what can the loikes 
of us do at all ? And so will ye put the rashkill 


EDITORIAL TRIALS. 


43 


of a dog, and the big bad boy Derrick Croome 
that owns him, in your paper, and niver let on I 
asked you, and I’ll thank ye kindly, and so will 
manny more besides ! ” 

Macurdy looked more and more troubled as he 
listened to Lizzie’s recital of her grievances, and 
Tom’s mumpy face grew dismally long. 

“You — you run along now, Lizzie, and we’ll 
see what we can do,” said Macurdy. “It — it’s 
a pretty serious matter.” And Lizzie went reluc- 
tantly out, reiterating the woful tale of the grand- 
mother’s petticoats and Patsy’s enforced absence 
from school. 

“ I guess it would be a serious matter to meddle 
with Derrick Croome just now,” said Tom. 

“ Look here, now, Tom ! ” Macurdy mounted 
the high stool in the composing-room, and thrust 
his hands deep into his pockets. “ This is a 
square issue. I’ve talked a good deal about mak- 
ing this paper pay ; but I’ve thought, too, about 
having it take a right stand about things. Of 
course we don’t want to meddle with politics, and 
things that are too big for us ; but when anything 
disturbs the peace and comfort of the town, like 
that vicious dog, I think it belongs to the press to 
say something about it. Of course we don’t want 
to tackle Derrick Croome.” 

« Well, I rather think we don’t ! ” said Tom 
hastily and heartily. 


44 TOM PICKERING OF 'SCUTNEY. 

“ But I don’t want to have anything to do with 
a paper that’s afraid to take the right stand when 
the community needs its influence ! ” said Macurdy. 

Tom felt a great admiration for Macurdy’s flow 
of language, and he wished that he had listened 
more attentively to the minister and the Fourth 
of July orators ; but he wasn’t inclined to risk 
quite so much for principle as Macurdy was. But 
he came around to Macurdy’s views at length, the 
usual result of Macurdy’s eloquence, or of his 
stronger spirit ; and Macurdy wrote “ a piece,” set- 
ting forth the danger and distress occasioned by a 
vicious dog, and, although he called no names, 
making it perfectly evident that it was Derrick 
Croome’s dog that he meant. The “ piece ” was 
written and set up that very afternoon, and Der- 
rick Croome read it the next day but one. 

And the next week something happened. The 
mumps had gone hard with Tom, and he was con- 
valescing slowly; and Macurdy had unfortunately 
had an unusual number of hard “ stents ; ” and they 
had both been obliged to work with might and 
main at odd moments to get started on this week’s 
paper ; and they were not a little anxious as to 
whether they should get it all set up in time. 
There had been prophecies that that paper would 
soon fail to appear, having only boys to manage 
it ; and they both felt that to have those prophe- 
cies fulfilled would be an unendurable disgrace. 


EDITORIAL TRIALS. 


45 


So it happened that after a hard and anxious 
and feverish day — he had been obliged to work 
on the sly, because it was not thought proper that 
a boy too ill to go to school should be occupied in 
printing a newspaper — Tom was sound asleep at 
eleven o’clock at night, and entirely oblivious of 
stealthy noises about the publishing-house. 

Luella, too, who, with editorial work and music 
and a church fair, found quite enough to occupy 
her out of school-hours, was tired enough to sleep 
well, and to hear nothing of the marauders who 
were ruthlessly fulfilling Derrick Croome’s threat 
of knocking the precious forms of The ’ Scutney 
Mail into “pi.” 

But Polly Rawson, a little way farther down the 
street, had been having a bad dream. Polly meant 
to be a good sister, and Bing often lay heavily on 
her mind ; and she dreamed that Bing had turned 
into a flapjack (that was Grandma Rawson’s name 
for griddle-cakes), and when she tried to turn him 
on the griddle he went flopping into the fire. 
Polly awoke with a start, fairly jumping up in 
bed, and for a moment it seemed as if the dream 
really must be true. Polly had a very vivid ima- 
gination, as you would know if you could read 
“The Enchanted Pumpkin Seed.” 

Presently she heard a very queer noise directly 
under her window, — a noise of footsteps and light 
wheels, and . a queer little rattle mingled with it. 


4 6 


TOM PICKERING OF ’ SCUTNEY \ 


Polly sprang out of bed and hurried to the win- 
dow. There were two figures, — Bing’s small and 
slender one and great hulking Derrick Croome’s, 
— and Bing’s hand-cart piled full of something 
that rattled as the boys drew the hand-cart cau- 
tiously along. 

Polly had heard from her friend, the literary 
editor, of Derrick Croome’s threat ; and she saw 
instantly that it was being put into execution. 
Not only had the printing been knocked into pi, 
but they had stolen and were carrying away the 
type, and probably the press itself ; for something 
loomed large and black in the semi-darkness, — 
the full moon was just then covered with light 
clouds, — and they evidently had a heavy load. 

Something startled the boys, and they began to 
run. Polly checked her first impulse to call after 
them, to arouse the house. That course would in- 
volve so much delay; and this was more serious 
mischief than Bing often indulged in. It would 
certainly cause his busy and long-suffering father 
to fulfil his threat of sending him away to school ; 
and Polly did not think that a large school, where 
he would have no sister to look after him, was the 
place for Bing. 

These thoughts were swift ones ; Polly was 
dressing herself while they flashed through her 
mind. She stole softly down-stairs, slipped on a 
warm jacket and cap, got out her bicycle as noise- 


EDITORIAL TRIALS. 47 

lessly as possible, mounted it, and was off in pur- 
suit of the thieves. 

What were they going to do with their spoils ? 
If it were only a little lighter, so that she could see 
them far ahead ! The January thaw had extended 
into February, and the ground was so slightly 
frozen that the cart-wheels made but little noise ; 
yet, straining her ears when she came to a turn 
in the road which made her uncertain which way 
to go, Polly detected the distant rumble and rat- 
tle of the hand-cart. The poorhouse pond ! They 
meant to throw the contents of the hand-cart into 
the pond ! Polly’s heart sank as this suspicion 
grew into certainty ; for by the light of the moon, 
which had emerged from the clouds, she saw that 
the cart had turned into the lane by the poor- 
house which led to the pond, — a small sheet of 
water, but so deep that there had always been a 
village tradition that it had no bottom. 

If the boys had meant to secrete the press or 
the type, returning it after a while, it would have 
seemed more like merely boyish mischief ; but to 
destroy it was a depth of wickedness into which 
she would scarcely have believed that Bing could 
be enticed. 

A feeble and flickering light burned in an upper 
window of the poorhouse as Polly, not having de- 
cided upon any plan of action, but afraid to hesi- 
tate, turned into the lane. The light disappeared 


48 TOM PICKERING OF 'SCUTNEY. 

as she rode, swiftly and as softly as possible, down 
the lane, and suddenly reappeared at the open door 
of the poorhouse. It was a candle held above 
Jim’s tall yellow head. Jim extinguished it sud- 
denly, and ran towards the pond. He turned at 
the sound of Polly’s wheel, and shrank back in 
evident alarm as she drew near. 

“Jim! Jim! don’t be afraid,” she said softly. 
“ I’m trying to stop some mischief, and you must 
help me ! ” 

“You — you’re a girl on a bicycle, aren’t you?” 
said Jim slowly, with an accent of relief. “You 
looked like a witch, growing bigger and bigger in 
the moonlight. Yes, I know there’s mischief ; 
those boys that went along with a hand-cart are 
Derrick Croome and Bing Rawson.” 

A heavy splash came to their ears, and Polly 
cried out frantically, as she slipped from her bi- 
cycle beside the boys at the water’s edge, “ Bing, 
don’t you dare to destroy property like that ! I’ll 
ring my bicycle bell, and arouse every one in the 
poorhouse, and have you arrested.” 

“We — we didn’t throw anything overboard but 
a rock,” stammered Bing, startled out of his ac- 
customed audacity by the sudden appearance of 
his sister. 

“You did it to see how deep the water was! 
You meant to throw the press into the water,” 
said Polly accusingly. 


EDITORIAL TRIALS. 


49 


Jim seized the handle of the cart from Derrick 
Croome. “ They’re Macurdy’s things, and I’m go- 
ing to take care of them,” he said, as if it were a 
matter of course. 

Derrick loosed Jim’s hold with a jerk and a 
rough push, and Jim fell heavily, striking his head 
against the cart-wheel ; he arose to his feet stag- 
gering, and a trickle of blood was plainly visible 
upon his cheek in the moonlight. 

“ I — I didn’t mean to hurt him,” stammered 
Derrick, evidently a little frightened. “ But I 
ain’t going to have a girl or a foolish fellow inter- 
fering with me ! ” Derrick moved the cart towards 
the edge of the pond, and prepared to tip its con- 
tents into the water. 

Polly uttered a half-smothered cry, and put her 
hand on her bell. It had a sharp ring, that little 
bell, and would arouse every one in the poorhouse ; 
and it would bring disgrace upon Bing, trouble 
upon his father and mother. Perhaps Derrick 
Croome had some misgivings, or the cart was 
heavy to tip ; and in the moment’s pause the poor- 
house door opened, and a tall figure came hurrying 
out. 

“ Here’s Mr. Peters with his gun ! ” cried Polly. 

Bing’s small person instantly disappeared from 
sight behind a tree, and Derrick Croome — well, 
what could you expect ? A bad boy like him is 
almost always a coward — Derrick Croome ran 


50 


TOM PICKERING OF 'SCUTNEY. 


away, behind the trees that bordered the pond, 
over the stone wall, and across the pasture. 

And, after all, it was only Caddy Forsythe who 
had come out of the poorhouse door — Caddy For- 
sythe with her broom. She was a poor insane 
woman, whose husband and sons had been lost at 
sea, and she swept and swept with a broom, to 
sweep away trouble. She was harmless, and wan- 
dered about at her own will day and night. She 
wandered off to the barn, sweeping diligently, and 
without seeing the group by the pond. 

For once, thought Polly, poor Caddy Forsythe’s 
broom had swept away trouble. 

Bing emerged from his retirement. 

“ Derrick Croome’s a coward ! ” he said wrath- 
fully. “ I wouldn’t have run away and left him 
like that ! ” 

Polly was helping Jim to wipe the blood from 
his face. 

“ We can take the cart back without any of his 
help,” she said, resolved to strike while the iron 
was hot. “ And though you’ve spoiled the paper 
for this week, perhaps what you meant to do need 
never be known — unless you want to confess it, 
and do all you can to make up for it.” 

“ I guess not much ! ” responded Bing gruffly, 
but with a little uneasy laugh. “They put in a 
piece about Derrick’s dog ; and they were sarsy, 
and wouldn’t give me a job.” 


EDITORIAL TRIALS. 


51 


“ This was a noble, a manly revenge, wasn’t it ? 
O Bing Rawson ! ” began Polly hotly. But she 
checked herself. One must manage Bing. Being 
a sister was not easy. “ I will leave my bicycle, — 
Jim will take care of it, — and help push the cart,” 
she said. 

But Jim declared that he was not hurt, and he 
would help push the cart. They were Macurdy’s 
things ; he wanted to take care of them. Oh, 
no, he would not be missed, he said, in answer to 
Polly’s question. He had been sitting up writing 
the “piece” about Sarah Loud for the Mail when 
he heard the noise of the cart in the lane. 

“ You can’t help much ; you’re only a girl,” 
growled Bing, glad of a chance to emphasize any 
point of superiority to Polly, who thought herself 
so superior. 

So the little midnight procession started hur- 
riedly ; for Caddy Forsythe had come out of the 
barn, still sweeping busily, and she was coming 
towards them, as if she thought them something 
to be swept away. 

Polly, going ahead on her bicycle, saw in the 
bright moonlight, as she turned out of the lane, a 
wreath of smoke curling upward, behind Farmer 
Bigsby’s house — a curling smoke and a swiftly 
leaping flame. 

“ The old granary, Bing ! Derrick Croome has 
set the old granary on fire ! ” she cried. 


52 


TOM PICKERING OF 'SCUTNEY. 


CHAPTER IV. 

“ OUR boy’s paper.” 

A CROSS the fields was the nearest way from 
- the poorhouse lane to Farmer Bigsby’s old 
granary ; and across the fields they trooped, Polly 
leaving her bicycle beside the stone wall, which 
she climbed as nimbly as the boys — more nimbly, 
indeed, than Jim, who was pale and trembling. 

“ He’ll be burnt up, — Sarah Loud and all the 
others ! ” he gasped, as Polly tried to encourage 
him by hopeful prophecies. 

“ Is Sarah Loud a he ? ” asked Polly, feeling 
that the emergency justified a little indulgence of 
her curiosity. 

“ I named him after somebody that I used to 
know,” said Jim evasively, — “ somebody who 
liked animals, just as I do. Do you suppose Ma- 
curdy has let them out ? ” he added, his voice 
strained and sharp with anxiety. “ Macurdy says 
he sleeps with one eye open. I’ve tried it, and 
I can’t do it ; but you know how very smart Ma- 
curdy is.” 

“ It’s a good thing that the granary is away off 


OUR BOY'S paper: 


53 


by itself,” said Bing, as Jim and Polly overtook 
him. “ Maybe it wasn’t Derrick that did it. 
Anyhow, Polly, you needn’t go to hollering like a 
girl until we see whether we can’t put the fire out. 
The brook is right near there, and it’s lucky it 
isn’t frozen.” 

It had not needed Bing’s warning to make Polly 
wish that they could extinguish the fire without 
an alarm. Perhaps one ought not to wish that 
Derrick should not be arrested ; but if he were, 
Bing’s share in the adventures of the night would 
be sure to come out, and it might be difficult to 
convince people that he was not concerned in the 
setting of the fire. 

The smoke was thicker now, but there was less 
flame. The fields were miry, and Polly’s boots 
were so heavy with mud that she could no longer 
run. Bing began to hang back a little, as if he 
were not altogether inclined to “ grace battle’s 
brunt ; ” but Jim’s long legs went steadily on, and 
when Polly was near enough to him she could hear 
that he was muttering anxiously about “ Sarah 
Loud.” 

As Jim approached the granary, with Polly close 
behind, and Bing’s small, hesitating figure bring- 
ing up the rear, a tall figure stepped sturdily out 
from the smoke. 

“ You needn’t be scared, nor make a fuss ; I’m 
here,” said Macurdy Green. 


54 


TOM PICKERING OF ’SCUTNE Y. 


“ They’re all safe — Sarah Loud and all ? ” de- 
manded Jim breathlessly. 

“ Yes, all are safe. I was afraid they’d smother, 
but there’s no danger now. He — that rascal of a 
Derrick Croome,” — it almost seemed as if sparks 
flew out of Macurdy’s gray eyes, — “ pried open 
the door after he had set the fire. Perhaps he 
wanted to let ’em out. I don’t know as he is bad 
enough to burn live things up, but I think he 
wanted to steal some of ’em ; and Sarah Loud bit 
him. He hollered, and I heard him. I sleep in 
the woodshed chamber ; and I’ve been sleeping 
with one eye open lately — kind of expecting there 
was mischief brewing.” 

“You treated us pretty mean, but I wouldn’t 
set things afire,” said Bing, digging in the ground 
with his heel. “ Derrick Croome’s a coward, 
anyway.” 

“ You leave him to Sarah Loud ! ” said Macurdy, 
with undisguised satisfaction. “He can bite.” 

Jim opened the granary door and entered. 
Queer chattering and scolding noises came from 
inside. 

“ I knew there were live things in there, squir- 
rels and things ; all the fellows say so ; but I 
wish’t I knew who Sarah Loud is,” said Bing. 

“Ain’t you ever going with Derrick Croome 
again — s’long’s you live?” demanded Macurdy 
solemnly. 


“ OUR BOY’S rarer:’ 55 

“ Honest and true, black and blue ! ” responded 
little Bing with equal solemnity. 

“ Well, Sarah Loud is something that you don’t 
very often see tamed. Jim can tame wild things. 
I suppose it’s because he likes ’em so. Sarah 
Loud is in a big cage, and he likes it pretty well, 
anyhow ; and he knows Jim and me, and wouldn’t 
bite us. And he’s a weasel. Some day if you 
come over, you and your sister — we don’t often 
show him to girls, but — but — you and she can 
see him.” 

Polly was not very enthusiastic about the weasel ; 
but she appreciated Macurdy’s stammeringly con- 
veyed compliment, and gravely accepted the in- 
vitation. 

“ I wish you would go home now, without mak- 
ing a bit of noise,” said Macurdy frankly. “ The 
fire’s all out, and I don’t want her to get wind of 
it,” with a significant nod towards the house. 
“ She won’t be likely to see any signs of it, be- 
cause she’s lame, and don’t get ’round much ; but 
if she should hear of it she’d be awful apt to put 
her foot down.” 

“ Then you won’t have Derrick Croome ar- 
rested ? ” asked Polly eagerly. 

4, I’ll just leave him to Sarah Loud!” said 
Macurdy confidently. 

Bing wondered what Macurdy would think was 
bad enough for him , if he knew of the confusion 


5 6 TOM PICKERING OF 'SCUTNEY. 

and desolation in the Mail office, and of the hand- 
cart with its load that was standing beside the stone 
wall in the poorhouse lane. And he hurried back 
across the field as fast as Polly herself — Polly, 
who had been seized with a sudden fear lest Der- 
rick Croome should come upon the hand-cart, and, 
with anger freshly aroused by Sarah Loud’s bite, 
wreak his vengeance upon it. 

The cart was there, with its contents safe ; and 
Bing pushed it homeward with might and main. 
Jim had offered to go with them to help; but he 
was evidently so tired, and so anxious about his 
pets in the granary, that Polly positively declined 
his aid, asking only that he should take care of her 
bicycle. 

There had been a heavy strain both on Polly’s 
nerves and muscles ; but she had heard Bing’s 
promise to Macurdy Green, — and an excellent 
thing about Bing was that he kept his promises, — 
and that lightened the load. They could not bring 
order out of the confusion in the composing-room 
of the Mail, but they restored the press and the 
type ; and Polly drew a long breath of relief as 
Bing softly locked the door behind them. She 
had carefully avoided reproaching Bing since his 
promise ; but she turned upon him now with a sud- 
den question, — 

“ Where did you get that key, Bing ? ” 

Bing hung his cherubic head. 


OUR BOY'S paper: 


57 


“ I heard Luella tell you that she was going to 
leave it under the mat, so you could go in and look 
at the proofs of * The Magic Squash Seed,’ ” he 
said. 

Polly lay awake thinking how hard it was to be 
a boy’s sister; but Bing — Bing, with all his mis- 
deeds upon his head, slept “ as they sleep who do 
not wake to care.” After all, The ’ Scutney Mail 
made its appearance that week ; but it was not 
until Saturday night, instead of Thursday, its 
regular date. 

Bing had faced the music manfully, and owned 
up to his share in the midnight raid, and be- 
came, indeed, a recognized ally and aid of the 
paper, explaining that he “wasn’t ’xactly on the 
staff, but ” — 

Sarah Loud’s punishment of Derrick Croome 
had been, as Macurdy had prophesied, quite severe 
enough. He was under the doctor’s care, with 
his hand and arm badly swollen, and with symp- 
toms of blood-poisoning. The identity of Sarah 
Loud was no longer a mystery, and all the boys in 
’Scutney were deeply interested in the tame wea- 
sel ; but the “ piece ” about him, which Macurdy’s 
journalistic heart yearned for just now, as timely 
and striking, was hanging fire, for the excitement 
and exposure of that adventurous night had been 
more than Jim could bear, and he was now ill at 
the poorhouse. 


58 TOM PICKERING OF 'SCUTNEY 

Macurdy’s hands were full. Tom’s mumps was 
prolonged ; and The ’ Scutney Mail could not have 
come out if Farmer Bigsby had not for once put 
his foot down, and declared that, in spite of the 
claims of churning and baking, Macurdy should 
have his Saturday holiday for his own devices. 
The truth was, that Farmer Bigsby was growing 
proud of Macurdy, and spoke of the Mail as “ our 
boy’s paper.” The paper sold in Hebron and at 
the Four Corners, and people were inclined to 
take it much more seriously than at first ; never- 
theless, the money did not come in very fast, and 
Tom was growing rather tired of the work, and 
very tired of hearing it called Macurdy’s paper. 

“ It’s about time there was a piece in that paper 
about me. I founded it, didn’t I ? ” said Tom to 
himself discontentedly. 

In the spelling-class one day, a week or two 
after the midnight raid, Tom handed a letter be- 
hind his back to Macurdy. They were “toeing 
the mark,” in the primitive fashion that prevailed 
in ’Scutney, and the teacher’s eye was only mo- 
mentarily absent from them ; but Tom had hap- 
pened to think of that letter, and wanted Macurdy 
to see it before he forgot it again — a fellow had 
so many things on his mind, now that spring .was 
coming, and there were more ball-games, and Lon 
Bailey of Hebron had threatened to thrash him 
for trying to make out, in the account in the 


“ OUR BOY'S PAPER.” 59 

Mail , that the ’Scutneys hadn’t a fair show in the 
last game. 

Macurdy took the letter, and found a chance 
to take a peep at it. It was from Tom’s Uncle 
Rufe, out in Texas ; and it said that a family who 
lived near him had been much interested in the 
story of the Queen of Sheba, because a young 
son, who was dead, had made a pet of a white tur- 
key in the same way, and had called her the 
Queen of Sheba. The family seemed to think it 
a remarkable coincidence, and wished to know 
more about the boy who had written the article, 
especially as it was signed “Jim,” and their boy 
who had died had been called Jimmie. Macurdy 
didn’t think the letter amounted to much. He 
didn’t see why another boy might not have called 
a turkey the Queen of Sheba, since it was a Bible 
name with which every one was acquainted; and 
if it was a queef coincidence, it didn’t strike his 
practical mind as being of much consequence. 

Tom forgot it too. Uncle Rufe had expressed 
very complimentary opinions of the paper, and 
Tom meant to suggest in his answer that a little 
more capital could be used to advantage in the 
development of the paper. Perhaps Uncle Rufe 
would send him another twenty-five dollars. He 
covered all four sides of his note-paper with what 
he considered delicate hints to that effect, but neg' 
lected to say who Jim was. 


6o 


TOM PICKERING OF 'SCUTNEY. 


Derrick Croome had been sent away to school 
by his father as soon as he had recovered from 
the effects of Sarah Loud’s bite ; and his vicious 
dog had been sent off to a farm to be trained into 
a respectable member of society — this latter de- 
parture being a blessing to the community, for 
which it gave due credit to the boys’ paper. 

So the boys’ enterprise went on with mingled 
joys and troubles, and plans for bettering things, 
like the older people’s; but Macurdy’s troubles 
were just now so heavy that he had no heart for 
his joys. Mr. Bigsby had put his foot down for 
once ; and Macurdy had used his Saturday holiday 
from school, usually a very busy day for “ chores ” 
and the housework that he hated, and had been 
able to bring out the Mail in spite of the disaster 
that had threatened to destroy it; but after this 
temporary overthrow of Mrs. Bigsby’s authority, she 
had reasserted herself vigorously. She was very 
indignant that “ a wild beast ” should be kept on 
their own premises, which had brought her nephew, 
Derrick Croome, “ to death’s door ; ” and nothing 
would appease her wrath except Farmer Bigsby’s 
promise that just as soon as it was so warm that 
the tamed creatures would not suffer by being 
turned loose into the woods and fields, the boys 
should be made to take them out of the granary. 

There would be no reprieve from that sentence, 
Macurdy knew; and he knew also that it would 


OUR BOY'S paper: 


6 1 


break Jim’s heart to lose his pets, — Sarah Loud, 
the remarkable weasel ; his white mice, which Ma- 
curdy had helped him to buy, and which he had 
brought home from the Four Corners on that mem- 
orable day when The ’ Scutney Mail was projected; 
his gray squirrels, and chipmunks, and rabbits. 

He would not be allowed to keep them at the 
poorhouse ; in fact, the question of sending Jim to 
the State poor-farm was being agitated again. He 
was ill, and needed constant care ; and the poor- 
mistress, who was not unkind, but was overbur- 
dened with work and care, complained of having a 
charge that did not rightfully belong to the town. 

Jim would die if he should lose his pets, and be 
sent away from the only place he knew as home, 
and from him (Macurdy) to whom his heart clung 
as to his only friend. In some way Macurdy felt 
he must prevent these trials from coming upon 
Jim. He was strong, and Jim was weak, so he 
must take care of the boy ; but how ? 

Farmer Bigsby gave him his board and clothing 
for his work, and he had very little time or oppor- 
tunity to earn anything more. He feared he should 
even be obliged to give up the paper now that the 
spring work of the farm was coming on. Farmer 
Bigsby had told him so only the other day. 

“ Ploughin’ and plantin’ ain’t a-goin’ to hitch 
horses with runnin’ a newspaper, Macurdy,” he 
had said, shaking his head seriously. “ You’ve 


62 


TOM PICKERING OF 'SCUTNEY. 


been smart about that paper. I’ve counted on 
seem’ it jest about as much as I have the Culti- 
vator; but it’s nothin’ but boys’ play, after all, and 
this is a world of solemn realities.” 

The “ solemn realities ” sounded so depressing 
that even Macurdy’s stout heart sank for a mo- 
ment. To drudge through every hour of daylight, 
with no chance to go to school, no hope of better- 
ing one’s fortunes, was, for an ambitious boy like 
Macurdy, a “ solemn reality ” indeed ; and now 
this necessity, or what he felt to be a necessity, of 
caring for Jim had come upon him. 

Macurdy was going homeward on the last day 
of school, with his books strapped upon his shoul- 
der to allow him to ease his mind a little by whit- 
tling, and with these heavy thoughts oppressing 
him. He had for once got past the point where 
whistling was possible, — he had tried it, and a 
lump in his throat had stopped him, — when sud- 
denly he remembered a saying of old Uncle Sol 
Ramsdell’s, “ There never was a scrape without a 
way out of it.” 

“ That’s true ; there always is something that a 
fellow can do ! ” said Macurdy to himself. “ Some- 
times, maybe, it’s only to grin and bear it ; but 
that’s better than to give up and make a girl of 
yourself.” And Macurdy resolutely swallowed the 
lump in his throat. 

If only Jim were provided for! Suddenly Ma- 


OUR BOY'S paper: 


63 


curdy remembered the people away off in Texas 
who had wished to know who the boy was who 
had written about the Queen of Sheba. 

“He might be so like their boy who died that 
they’d want to adopt him or something,” said Ma- 
curdy to himself ; and he straightway resolved that 
he would ask Tom that very night to write to his 
Uncle Rufe, and tell him all about Jim. 

The sketch of Sarah Loud was finished, and 
would appear in this week’s paper ; and that might 
still further arouse the interest of those Texas peo- 
ple who had lost their son. Macurdy had helped 
Jim to write it ; and it was, as Macurdy with can- 
did pride declared, “a pretty fair article.” Those 
girls, the literary editor and her friend Polly Raw- 
son, had “ tinkered ” it a little ; they had a knack at 
straightening a sentence out and turning it round 
a little, so that a fellow really said what he wanted 
to better than he knew how to himself ; and they 
did it without making a fellow feel small, either. 
Macurdy thought that Polly Rawson had exercised 
a good influence over that Luella, who had, as Tom 
said, been a little “ topping ” in the beginning ; 
and he had a much higher opinion of “ women in 
journalism” than when he had begun to edit The 
’ Scutney Mail. 

At the thought of the paper Macurdy had a 
fresh pang. He felt as if he could not give it up. 
He should be too tired to work nights, even if Mr. 


6 4 


TOM PICKERING OF ’ SCUTNEY 


Bigsby would allow him to ; but he meant to try 
to get some one — perhaps Polly Rawson, with lit- 
tle Bing to help set type — to do his share of the 
work until the summer farming was done, and he 
might have a little leisure again. 

He hoped that, with all his other troubles, a ru- 
mor that had reached him was not true, — a rumor 
that at last a weekly paper was to be published in 
’Scutney, a real grown-up paper, which would cast 
the Mail entirely into the shade. 

It happened rather queerly, as things often do 
happen in this world, that just as he was thinking 
of this, a stranger in ’Scutney, a brisk and wide- 
awake looking man, stopped as they met very near 
Farmer Bigsby ’s pasture bars, and with a some- 
what quizzical and amused expression, which Ma- 
curdy didn’t altogether like, asked him if he had 
the honor of addressing Macurdy Green. 

Macurdy responded, in a dignified manner, that 
Macurdy Green was his name. 

“Editor of The ’ Scutney Mail f ” continued the 
stranger, subduing his quizzical air to one of re- 
spect. 

“ I’m one of the editors,” said Macurdy with 
modest pride. He was suddenly conscious of his 
old patched jacket, which Mrs. Bigsby had made 
him wear to school, and of Mr. Bigsby’ s broad- 
cloth Sunday trousers — of ten years’ standing — 
which had just fallen to his share; of his great 


OUR BOY'S paper: 


65 


clodhopper shoes, and hat with a dilapidated brim ; 
and he held his head the higher because he had 
been ashamed of them. 

“ I’m going to start a paper here — at least, I’m 
one of a company that’s going to, and I’m to be 
the managing editor,” continued the man. “ I 
think there’s a good chance for a live newspaper 
here. Queer that there’s never been one.” 

“There’s the Mail , you know,” said Macurdy 
with dignity. 

“ Oh, yes ! ” The stranger instantly suppressed 
the slightest of smiles, and spoke very respectfully. 
“You boys have done well with that little paper. 
It shows a good deal of cleverness. I’ve been 
staying over at Hebron, and I happened to see 
two or three copies of it. My paper is going to 
be started next month. We’ve hired Croome’s 
block on the main street. Now I’m looking for 
a boy. He’ll have to sweep and dust, and do the 
drudgery ; but — he’ll have a chance to work up. 
And I want a boy who knows the locality, and can 
pick up bits of local news, as you have in your 
paper. You see, we shall all be strangers in ’Scut- 
ney. I’ve been inquiring about you, and I think 
you’re just the fellow I want. You won’t get 
much at first, but it will be enough to board and 
clothe you — decently ” (with a glance at Ma- 
curdy’s peculiar toilet). “ And if you are as 
smart as I think you are, it’s a chance for you.” 


66 


TOM PICKERING OF 'SCUTNEY. 


A chance for him ! Macurdy thrilled to his 
finger-tips. The blood rushed to his face and 
then away again, leaving it pale under the great 
yellow freckles. It was a way out of his hopeless 
drudgery; with enough to board and clothe him, 
he could manage to take care of Jim. 

Then came a tug at his heart, — the thought of 
the little ’ Scutney Mail , the paper that he had 
meant should grow up with him. But it was 
Tom’s paper. Tom reminded him of it cuttingly 
very often. 

But the wood that he was whittling fell from 
his hands, and they dropped dejectedly by his side. 
Then he straightened himself up, and set his dilap- 
idated old hat squarely on his head. 

“ I’m reg’larly engaged on the Mail” he said. 
“It wouldn’t be fair to Tom.” 

The man threw back his head and laughed. 
“You take that paper very seriously,” he said. 
“You ought to realize that it’s only boys’ play.” 

“Tom won’t give it up — Tom Pickering who 
owns it. He has asked his uncle for money to 
put it on a firmer financial basis,” said Macurdy 
sturdily. 

“ Well, well, think it over ! I dare say I can 
find a boy if you don’t want the job,” said the 
man a little impatiently, as he started to go. 

“ I’d like the job — I’d like it well; but I’ve got 
to do the fair thing,” said Macurdy. 


MA CURDY SENDS A TELE GR AM. 67 


CHAPTER V. 

MACURDY SENDS A TELEGRAM. 

OM’S whole heart was in the Mail — all the 



JL more since what he regarded as a rival had 
appeared in the field in the form of the new 
paper, which was to be called The ’ Scutney Tele- 
graph. Macurdy found this out as soon as he 
talked with the editor. After a long debate with 
himself he finally decided that to desert Tom and 
go over to the enemy would be a base thing. 

Meanwhile, Tom hung around Croome’s block; 
he often went into the editorial office, and watched 
the carpenters at work there. One day the editor, 
the lively man of Macurdy’s acquaintance, came in 
and spoke to him in a flatteringly friendly fashion, 
calling him “a brother craftsman,” and introduced 
him to “ Mr. McPherson,” another member of the 
Telegraph company. 

These men thought something of the Mail , and 
they knew, thought Tom proudly. The little quiz- 
zical air of the editor, which had offended Macurdy, 
quite escaped Tom. 

“You don’t happen to know of a boy that we 


68 


TOM PICKERING OF 'SCUTNEY. 


could get, do you ? ” asked the editor, after some 
conversation, in which he had drawn Tom out 
concerning the affairs of the Mail. “A ’Scutney 
boy with something in him, to grow up with the 
paper? ” 

And then he explained the drudgery to be done, 
and also the chances. And Tom’s heart thrilled 
almost as Macurdy’s had done. 

“ I wish you’d take me ! ” he said. “ I’m awful 
tired of going to school. I’ve been wanting to 
go into business — into real business — for a long 
time.” 

“ Would your father be willing ? Your father is 
Dr. Pickering, isn’t he ? ” asked the editor. 

“ Yes, I’m sure he would let me ; for this spring 
and summer, anyway.” 

“ We’ll try you, if he’s willing,” said the editor ; 
and Tom went off feeling as if he walked on air. 

It was not until he came within sight of the 
publishing-house of the Mail that he felt a twinge 
of regret. Every one said that the Mail was a 
great success, — for boys; but they were apt to 
give all the credit of the success to Macurdy, and 
to call it Macurdy’s paper. And Luella said it was 
“ mean ” for him to tell everybody that it was his 
money, anyway. And he wanted to have some- 
thing to do with a new enterprise that was creat- 
ing such a sensation. But what would Macurdy 
say about giving up the Mail l He would be sorry 


MA CURDY SENDS A TELEGRAM. 69 

to have Macurdy disappointed ; he would like to do 
the fair thing by Macurdy. 

Macurdy was all unconscious that he was losing 
not only his chance in life, but the little paper 
upon which he had worked so hard as well. He 
went the next day with his ploughshare, only to 
find when he reached the Four Corners that Nate 
Brimblecom, the blacksmith, had a felon on his 
finger, and was not able to sharpen it. In view of 
such an emergency, Mr. Bigsby had told him to 
go on to Hebron ; his (Mr. Bigsby’s) brother was 
a blacksmith there, and if Macurdy could not get 
it done in time to bring it home that night, — it 
being already late in the afternoon, — he was to 
remain at Mr. Bigsby’s brother’s all night, and 
return early in the morning. The plough must be 
ready for use just as soon as possible. 

When Macurdy arrived, the blacksmith was said 
to be at the railroad station near his shop, and 
Macurdy went over there to look for him. 

A stranger was standing near the stage. He 
was a young man, stylishly dressed, but with a 
weak face, and a look which even to Macurdy’s 
inexperienced eyes suggested dissipation. He in- 
quired of Macurdy if that were the conveyance to 
’Scutney. 

“ Do you know anybody over there ? ” he con- 
tinued immediately, upon receiving Macurdy’s af- 
firmative answer. 


70 


TOM PICKERING OF 'SCUTNEY. 


“ I b’long over there,” said Macurdy readily. 

“You don’t happen to know a boy named Ma- 
curdy Green, do you ? ” asked the young man. 

“Well, I’m some acquainted with him,” said 
Macurdy, looking down, and digging his heel into 
the ground in an embarrassed way. Then he 
looked up and grinned. 

“ Oh, you’re Macurdy Green, are you ? ” said 
the stranger. And he looked Macurdy over with 
a somewhat puzzled air. 

“You have something to do with a little paper 
that the boys publish over there, and you’re great 
friends with a boy at the poorhouse who has been 
writing little sketches for the paper ? ” 

Macurdy nodded assent, feeling a vague wonder 
that his affairs should be spread abroad in the 
land ; for it was evident that the stranger had just 
arrived in Hebron by train. 

“ I want to see the boy — Jim. You see, there’s 
a lady out in Texas, where I came from, who lost 
a boy who was called Jimmie ; and he was fond of 
pets, and this boy reminds her of him. She wanted 
me to come .here and see him. Of course it can’t 
be her son, because we heard positively that he 
was dead. But her health is broken, — her hus- 
band died suddenly soon after the son, — and we 
have to humor her queer notions. I’m her nephew. 
Now, I want to see this boy Jim without his seeing 
me. Of course I don’t want to show an interest 


MA CURDY SENDS A TELEGRAM. 7 1 

in him, to arouse any false hopes in his mind. My 
aunt’s friends don’t think it would be well for her 
to adopt a boy in the present state of her health, 
even if he did remind her very much of her son 
who died. But I promised that I would see what 
he was like, and ease her mind.” 

The young man spoke in an easy, off-hand way ; 
but he cast glances of keen curiosity at Macurdy, 
and ended with an embarrassed little laugh. 

“Jim hasn’t any friends that I know of,” said 
Macurdy sadly. “ I wish I could find out where 
he came from. He’s a little weak in his mind.” 

“ Doesn’t remember anything of his life before 
he came here ? ” The young man asked the ques- 
tion carelessly, but there was an eagerness in his 
tone which did not escape Macurdy. Farmer 
Bigsby had been heard to say that Macurdy hadn’t 
big ears and a sharp nose for nothing. 

“ No ; he doesn’t remember even his name. They 
called him Jim in the circus, so that probably is 
the name he gave them,” answered Macurdy. But 
he had begun to be careful about what he said. 

“ And — and Sarah Loud — the name he gave 
his weasel — was a name that happened to strike 
his fancy ? ” 

“ No ; it was the name of some one he used to 
know, — an old woman, he thinks, who was kind 
to him. He gets bewildered when he tries to re- 
member,” said Macurdy. 


72 


TOM PICKETING OF ’ SCUTNEY, \ 


It was Macurdy’s turn to look at his questioner 
now. The young man’s face had flushed, and his 
brows wrinkled anxiously. 

“ I should like to have a little talk with you,” he 
said at length. “ Perhaps it may not be necessary 
for me to go to ’Scutney at all. I’m sure that it 
would not be wise for my aunt to adopt the boy, 
as he is weak-minded.” 

Macurdy’s eyes had wandered towards the trav- 
elling-bag which the young man carried. A card 
hung from it with a name engraved upon it. The 
stranger tore it off when he saw Macurdy’s gaze. 

“ That’s a friend’s card; we changed ‘grips’ by 
mistake,” he said, with a careless air. “ My name 
is Brownlow — George K. Brownlow. As I was 
going to say, you’re a bright, smart fellow, and 
a friend to the boy. I’m willing to make it for 
your interest — very much for your interest — to 
help me keep my aunt from being troubled any 
further about him. I want to send him away from 
here — farther East, probably ; and I should like to 
have you go with him to look after him. You and 
he would both be well provided for — boarded in 
some family, and you could both go to the best 
schools; and when you grow up, I’ll see that you 
have a good start in life. I’ll do more ; I’ll give 
you five thousand dollars when you are twenty-one. 
I’ll put it into a bank for you now, so that you can 
be sure of it, if — if you’ll take good care of Jim, 


MA CURDY SENDS A TELEGRAM. 


7 3 


and — and keep my aunt from finding him if this 
nervous condition of hers leads her to try.” 

The young man looked steadfastly at Macurdy ; 
and the boy’s soul, with its country simplicity and its 
rugged honesty, was in a tumult. He had thought 
his experiences as an editor of the Mail very excit- 
ing, and had felt very wise and sophisticated ; but 
this was quite a new phase of worldly experience. 

Then a sense of responsibility thrilled him. It 
was for Jim — for Jim that he must sharpen his 
wits, and find out what this man really meant ! 

“ I couldn’t go for a week or more,” he said 
slowly. “ I should have to give Mr. Bigsby time 
to get another boy to work for him.” 

“ I shouldn’t want you to go until — well, say 
ten days from now — a week from next Thursday. 
I’ve got to go farther East on business, and to find 
a place for you. And I shall expect you to make 
things right with the poorhouse people. Of course 
they’ll be glad enough to get rid of Jim; but they 
will feel bound to ask questions. You’re going to 
get your chance in the world — the best chance a 
boy ever had — by knowing how to answer ques- 
tions without telling anything.” 

Macurdy’s cheeks burned with the guilty but 
half-amused consciousness that he was just now 
taking his first lesson in that art ! 

“I shall expect you to meet me here with Jim 
just before the morning train leaves, a week from 


7 4 


TOM PICKERING OF ’ SCUTNEY , i 


Thursday. Be ready to go, and don’t come too 
early — these country people are full of curiosity. 
And, remember, if you talk about this to anybody, 
or let Jim talk, I sha’n’t want you,” and. he walked 
back to the station alone. 

The blacksmith could not sharpen that plough- 
share until morning, and Macurdy had been bid- 
den to stay all night. But the blacksmith and his 
family went to bed early, and it was only a little 
past nine o’clock when Macurdy softly led old Tim 
out of the barn and mounted his bare back. Old 
Tim was bony, and his gait was eccentric, but 
Macurdy hung on ; he would have preferred to 
walk, but he felt that there was not time. 

A tinkle of gravel against his window and a faint 
whistle brought Jim down to the poorhouse door. 

“ Jim, try to remember — think hard ! ” said Ma- 
curdy eagerly, with one hand on Jim’s shoulder, 
and the other holding the halter of the astonished 
and reluctant old Tim. “ Did you ever hear the 
name of Emmerton — J. Randall Emmerton ? ” 

Jim drew a long, hard breath. 

“ Emmerton — oh, that’s it, ’Curdy ! — that’s my 
name ! I’ve tried so long to remember it. I’ve 
hoped that I might dream it. Jimmie — James 
Emmerton ; that’s who I am. Randall Emmer- 
ton ; that’s who my father is.” 

“ And you had a cousin — tall, with lightish hair 
but dark eyes, and a queer smile ? ” 


MA CURDY SENDS A TELEGRAM. 7 5 

“ Randy, Randy ! He was wild, and they sent 
him away. ’Curdy, I think I have a mother like 
other boys. Do you think so, ’Curdy ? ” 

“ I can’t tell, Jim. I hope so. I’ve got to go; 
I’m in an awful hurry!” Macurdy disengaged Jim’s 
clinging arm, and jumped upon his ancient steed. 

“I’ve got you, anyhow, ’Curdy,” called Jim’s 
soft, pathetic voice. 

“You’ve got me, anyhow, Jim,” came back Ma- 
curdy’s voice in a stage-whisper, but with empha- 
sis. And Jim went to bed bewildered, but in 
happy trust, while Macurdy urged old Tim just 
as fast as he had the heart to do back over the 
road to Hebron. He roused the sleepy telegraph 
operator in the Hebron station before the clock 
struck ten. He wrote out with care the message 
that he wished to send : — 

“ Mrs. Randall Emmerton, Waco, Texas. Your 
son James is in ’Scutney, Massachusetts. Come 
quick.” 

Nine words ; but he had another quarter, and 
she might not come unless things were quite plain. 
Besides, it was worth the other quarter — the last 
proceeds of The ’ Scictney Mail — to add, “Your 
nephew, J. Randall Emmerton, has acted villio- 
nous.” Macurdy wasn’t sure about the spelling 
of that last word ; the girl operator laughed. 

“Sign it Editor ’ Scutney Mail" said Macurdy 
with dignity. 


76 


TOM PICKERING OF 'SCUTNEY. 


“ Coming. Take care of my boy,” was the tele- 
gram that Macurdy received, and at the end, “ God 
bless you.” 

It happened that the day when Jim’s relatives 
came — his mother and her daughter’s husband — 
was the very day and the very morning when the 
“villionous” nephew had arranged to meet Ma- 
curdy at the same station. And so Macurdy 
met him, with Jim and Jim’s mother beside him. 
Randy turned pale, and slipped away out of sight 
as if the earth had swallowed him up. 

“ Randall never was a good boy,” Jim’s mother 
said ; “ but we never thought he could be so bad 
as he has shown himself. He was to have Jim- 
mie’s share of the property if Jimmie was never 
found. We never thought he would be, because 
we heard from the circus company that he ran 
away with that he was dead. I might never have 
found my boy if it had not been for you.” 

She hugged and kissed Macurdy right there 
in the railroad’ station ; and Macurdy felt — well, 
“ pretty cheap,” as he afterwards confided to Tom ; 
but nevertheless it was the proudest day of his 
life — prouder even than when the first issue of 
the Mail was cried about the ’Scutney streets. 

They had lived in New York when Jimmie ran 
away with the circus, — Jimmie, who had always 
been delicate, and not quite like other boys, his 
mother further explained. After Jim’s father’s 


MA CURDY SENDS A TELEGRAM. 


77 


death, Jim’s mother had gone to live with her 
daughter in Texas ; and there the little ’Scutney 
paper had reached her through her neighbor, Tom 
Pickering’s Uncle Rufe. 

“ Well, we never thought the paper would do 
such a great thing as that, did we ? ” said Tom, 
after Macurdy had told him all about it. Macurdy 
had run over to the Mail office as soon as his 
“ chores ” were done that noon. The Mail had 
been all ready the day before, but he must help 
Tom and Bing to deliver it. 

He had scarcely seen Tom for a week, and only 
in the brief spaces of time that he had been able 
to snatch for work on the Mail y when they were 
both too busy to talk. 

Tom now gloomily barred the way to the Mail 
office when Macurdy would have entered. “ You’d 
better not go in,” he said, seating himself on the 
upper step, and beginning to whittle in a faint- 
hearted and embarrassed way. “ I thought you’d 
find out. Haven’t you been into the granary 
yet ? ” 

“ Why, no ! I came over here the very first 
thing after I came from Hebron, and Jim is there 
at the hotel with his people. We left a lot of 
food for the animals in the granary last night. 
Has anything happened to them ? ” Macurdy’s 
voice was husky with fear. 

“ Nothing has happened to them except that 


78 


TOM PICKERING OF 'SCUTNEY. 


Sarah Loud has got away, I s’pose ; and a weasel 
ought to get away. What sense is there in trying 
to tame a weasel ? ” Tom’s voice had an aggrieved 
tone, and he whittled so vigorously that the chips 
flew in every direction. “ ’N’ they’ve ate up the 
Mail : ’ 

“Ate up the Mail?” echoed Macurdy in bewil- 
dered dismay. 

“ Those girls, Luella and Polly Rawson, were 
coming home from an apron party at Sar’ Abby 
Blodgett’s about half-past nine o’clock last night. 
When they got near the granary they heard an 
awful noise — something kind of whisking ’round, 
and the squirrels scolding as loud as they could. 
I should like to know where you were that you 
didn’t hear all that racket.” 

“ I slept with Jim at the poorhouse; Mrs. Bigsby 
had so much company that she had to have my 
room,” explained Macurdy. “ Sarah Loud didn’t 
hurt the mice, did he ? ” he inquired anxiously. 

“ They were afraid he would, — those girls were, 
— but when Luella had got in at the window she 
was scared ’most to death. Sarah Loud had got 
loose; and Luella just grabbed the cage of white 
mice, and hopped out of the window with it. She 
thinks Sarah Loud scooted out after her before 
she shut the window ; but she isn’t sure. Well, 
those girls just put the cage of mice in here ; and 
it wouldn’t have done any harm if the door of 


MACURDY SENDS A TELEGRAM. 


79 


the cage hadn’t come open. All those mice were 
scampering and gnawing ’round in here all night ! ” 
Tom rose, and threw open the door in impressive 
silence. 

Copies of the Mail, which had been arranged in 
a neat pile ready for delivery, were gnawed and 
torn, and scattered about the floor ; not one copy 
was left whole and clean. The piles of paper 
ready for printing were all gnawed at the edges, 
and a bottle of ink had been overturned upon 
them, and was still dripping and forming little 
pools upon the floor ; and the type was scattered 
in all directions. 

“ Looks as if ’twas the end of The ’ Scutney 
Mail, don’t it?” said Macurdy; and although he 
grinned broadly, there was a quiver in his voice. 
“ I’ve got something to tell you, Tom,” Macurdy 
went on, with an effort. “ I know you’ll feel bad, 
and I do myself, though it seems as if I’d got a 
real chance at last. Jim’s mother wants me to go 
home with them, and she’ll send me to school 
with Jim; and she’ll let me pay my way, so I 
sha’n’t be beholden to anybody. I can, you know, 
Tom ; just give me a chance ! ” 

“ I guess you can,” responded Tom heartily. 
“You’re an awful smart fellow, ’Curdy, and a 
square one too ! I b’lieve you’re the squarest fel- 
low I ever knew. I hate to have you go ; but — 
but I guess it’s all come ’round right. I — I’ve 


8 o 


TOM PICKERING OF 'SCUTNEY. 


got a chance myself, ’Curdy ! ” Tom straddled the 
high stool, and kicked its legs in an embarrassed 
way. “ More’n a week ago those Telegraph people 
offered me a chance in their office. I didn’t know 
until they told me to-day that they’d offered it to 
you first. It was square of you to stick to the 
Mail \ ’Curdy, awful square ! I thought I would 
go on to the Telegraph , and I coaxed father till 
he said I might ; and then I thought it wasn’t 
square, and I got ’em to wait. I thought I’d talk 
with you about it, and then I knew you thought 
such a lot of the Mail I couldn’t bear to. But 
to-day, when it was all ate up, and there isn’t any 
money to buy any more paper, why, I said I 
would. You see, everybody thought it was boys’ 
play ; and it takes so long for a paper to grow up 
with you” — 

“ I’m glad you did it, Tom! You’ve got the 
makings of an editor ! ” said Macurdy, feeling that 
there could scarcely be higher praise. “And now 
I don’t feel so bad about going away.” 

“Maybe we’ll be editors together yet,” — Tom 
swallowed a big lump in his throat, and Macurdy 
openly drew his sleeve across his eyes, — “on a 
bigger paper than The ’ Scutney Mail. 


THE TREASURER OF THE FO RESIDE CLUB. 8 1 


CHAPTER VI. 


THE TREASURER OF THE FORESIDE CLUB. 



NE summer day, not many months after Ma- 


curdy and Jim had gone away to Texas, Tom 
Pickering took it into his head to attend a meet- 
ing of the F'oreside Club. 

“ There’s nothing else to do,” he said ; “ I guess 
I’ll have to go up and bother the girls.” 

Tom felt quite lost without Macurdy. He had 
not stayed long in the Telegraph office. It wasn’t 
like being the real proprietor of a paper ; indeed, 
it needed Macurdy’s strong good sense to keep 
Tom out of the mischief that idle hands will some- 
times do. Luella was trying her best to help him, 
but girls don’t always make a success in discipline. 

But before Tom reached the club-house — it 
was the dining-room at Dr. Pickering’s — the 
’Scutney Foreside Club was in a ferment. In- 
deed, it was as if a bomb had exploded under the 
very feet of the club when Luella Pickering, the 
president, said in her firmest voice, “ Miss Chair- 
man, I nominate Miss Araminta Round for treas- 
urer of this club.” 


82 


TOM PICKERING OF 'SCUTNEY. 


The girl from ’Scutney Corners treasurer of the 
Foreside Club ! 

Minty Round sat near the door, with her feet 
on the rungs of her chair, and her hands clasped 
about her knees — an ugly and awkward figure, 
tall for fifteen, but with stooping shoulders and 
prominent cheek-bones. Her wide mouth drooped 
dejectedly at the corners ; only her eyes were 
beautiful, of no particular color, but clear and 
frank and eager. She wore a faded skimpy ging- 
ham dress, a cotton shawl of primitive reds and 
greens, and a hat whose battered condition was 
only emphasized by the profusion of draggled feath- 
ers and crushed flowers that adorned it ; on her 
hands were white silk gloves, yellowed by age, and 
much too large for her. She started from her seat 
when Luella Pickering made the nomination, and 
a flush dyed her sharp, sallow face. There was a 
subdued murmur all around the room. 

“ Did you ever ? ” whispered Viola Hitchings 
to Polly Raws on, Bing’s sister. “ It was queer 
enough when she was voted in ; I thought the 
Foreside Club was going to be just ourselves. 
A Corners girl — an essence peddler’s daughter ! ” 

Viola’s father kept a large store in Hebron 
Centre; he had just added several “departments” 
which made it like a city store, and Viola felt that 
this gave her a social position which she was bound 
to maintain. 


THE TREASURER OF THE FORESIDE CLUB. 83 

“ There isn’t another girl in ’Scutney with such 
a head for figures as Minty has. I suppose that 
really ought to be considered a little in a treas- 
urer,” said Polly Rawson half doubtfully. Even 
the multiplication table was a stumbling-block to 
Polly Rawson, and though she' had been literary 
editor she had a painful sense of her deficiencies. 

“ I don’t think it’s likely to require a mathemat- 
ical bump to keep our accounts,” said Viola with 
a little toss of her frowzy, tow-colored bangs ; and 
she made a stern resolve to perform her social 
duty in spite of Luella Pickering. The murmur 
which followed Luella’s nomination was succeeded 
by an embarrassing silence. Minty Round did 
not seem likely to be nominated by acclamation. 
Luella was growing yet more practical, and already 
she had acquired a peculiar staid dignity. She 
held her little smooth head very high, and two red 
spots burned upon her cheeks. The girl from 
’Scutney Corners looked breathlessly and open- 
mouthed from face to face ; she had entirely lost 
the self-consciousness that had made her look with 
half-doubting satisfaction at her gloves, and pull 
her skimpy skirts around her dilapidated shoes. 
Some of the girls were of Viola Hitchings’s mind ; 
they wondered, too, what the ’ Scutney Telegraph 
would think. Some thought, also, that Luella was 
taking too much upon herself, even if she were the 
founder of the club, when she tried to foist her 


8 4 


TOM PICKERING OF 'SCUTNEY. 


’Scutney Corners protigte upon them ia that way. 
Ever since that girl and her father had moved 
from the Corners, the back settlement of ’Scutney, 
where the people were poor and thriftless and of 
doubtful morals, settling down in the little dilapi- 
dated house at the foot of the hill, Luella Picker- 
ing had made much of her. 

A willow hedge bordered the grounds of Dr. Pick- 
ering, and separated them from the shabby little 
place where the Rounds lived ; on the dreary, early - 
spring day when they came there, Luella had made 
friends with Minty through the spiky willows. 

Minty would never forget it. She knew what 
they thought of Corners folks at ’Scutney P'ore- 
side. It was just like Luella to do it ; that was 
what every one said ; just like her also to be de- 
lighted and triumphant when Minty Round proved 
herself to have a quite remarkable mathematical 
talent, although it had been developed only in the 
school at the Corners, which held its sessions at 
those rare intervals when the boys had not burned 
the schoolhouse, or disabled the schoolmaster or 
smoked him out, or deserted in a body to go hunt- 
ing or fishing or marauding. 

A smooth head like Luella’ s suddenly appeared 
in the open window ; but it was a larger head, — 
a boy’s. A pair of heavy eyebrows met above 
clear, quick-glancing eyes ; a good-natured mouth 
was parted in a grin that showed a broad expanse 


THE TREASURER OF THE FORE SIDE CLUB. 85 

of white uneven teeth. It was a strong face, but 
a somewhat wilful and impulsive one. 

The Foreside Club frowned, for “ gentlemen ” 
were not admitted to its meetings. Nevertheless, 
it felt the interruption as a relief to the constrained 
silence. 

“ I should like to know who is going to keep 
the accounts of a girls’ club ? ” said the boy so 
appositely that if his whistle had not preceded 
him he might have been suspected of eavesdrop- 
ping. “ Girls can write compositions, and tie them 
up with blue ribbons, and they’re always picking 
a fellow up on grammar ; but they haven’t the 
right kind of brains for the exact sciences.” The 
boy wagged his head seriously. “ You have a girl 
for treasurer of your club, and your accounts will 
be all muddled up, and as likely as not your money 
lost — you’ll see ! ” 

It was Selina Craigie who turned upon the boy. 
“ I should like to know, Tom Pickering, who is 
at the head of the algebra class in the Foreside 
school ? a class that has as many boys as girls ! ” 
she cried hotly. “ And who solved a problem in 
her head that you boys couldn’t do on your slates ? 
and made up a mathematical puzzle that was too 
much for the schoolmaster and the minister.” 

“ Oh, if it comes to puzzling people, I never 
said ! ” — exclaimed the boy with a twinkle in his 
eyes. 


86 


TOM PICKERING OF 'SCUTNEY. 


“ A girl who never had a chance, either, not a 
bit of a chance,” pursued Selina, ignoring the in- 
terruption. Then she suddenly stopped short. 
She had not really intended to champion Minty 
Round’s cause : she was one of those who had 
scarcely welcomed the girl from the Corners to 
the club ; but she had strong views about the 
equality of the sexes, and a very quick temper. 
Long afterwards there were girls who said it was 
Selina Craigie’s red hair that was responsible for 
what happened that day. 

“ I sha’n’t be surprised if the next show that 
comes ’round has a lightning calculator in pet- 
ticoats,” said Tom Pickering, with an air of pro- 
found conviction. “And I’m sure I congratulate 
you on your treasurer ! ” 

There was a great wagging of tongues, and 
many home truths, frankly expressed, assailed the 
ears of the critic as he sauntered away ; but when 
he was really and unquestionably out of hearing, 
the silence that fell again was more embarrassing 
than before. One could have heard a pin drop in 
the club-room, which, as you know, was the long, 
low dining-room of Dr. Pickering’s house. Even 
the lilac-scented breeze ceased to stir the great 
bunch of peacock feathers upon the old-fashioned 
secretary ; the painted girl with the skipping-rope, 
that served as a pendulum in the tall clock case, 
seemed to have just stopped, with uplifted foot, to 


THE TREASURER OF THE FORESIDE CLUB . S/ 

listen; and Minty Round, with face aflame, still 
stood and clasped her queerly gloved hands to- 
gether in suspense. 

Selina Craigie had a following, rather by reason 
of energy and force of character than of worldly 
advantages. She valued her eminence as a leader, 
and was careful, or at least as careful as her tem- 
perament would allow, not to jeopardize it by hasty 
judgments. She felt rather aghast now at what she 
had done, and wondered, dubiously, whether she had 
really committed herself to Minty Round’s cause. 

But she had aroused her followers’ enthusiasm, 
and they were not hampered by her doubts, be- 
cause, perhaps, they lacked the responsibility of 
leadership ; they were only waiting for Selina to 
second the nomination. But it was the voice of 
the girl from the Corners, harsh and strained with 
emotion, that broke the silence. 

“I could keep the accounts well and straight, 
and I would keep them honest, and take care of 
the money. Nobody should have it without — 
without they walked over me, dead, to get it ! I 
haven’t had a chance, as she said,” — with a nod 
towards Selina. “ I never expected to be so much 
like other girls as to belong to a club. Corners 
folks are — are different from' you — though they 
ain’t so bad as some folks make them out ! ” she 
added, with a flash of loyalty to her old friends. 
“ I wouldn’t want you to have me for treasurer 


88 


TOM PICKERING OF ’ SCUTNEY. 


if you didn’t want me — any of you,” her voice 
threatened to break, but bravely held itself firm, 
— “but if you did ! ” the thin, sensitive lips quiv- 
ered and compressed themselves suddenly. 

“We do!” cried Selina Craigie impulsively. 
And “ We do ! ” cried Selina Craigie’s followers 
heartily — even Roberta Wing, who was supposed 
to wish to be the treasurer herself. The enthu- 
siasm was contagious, as enthusiasm always is. 
Even Viola Hitchings found herself murmuring 
“ We do ! ” and afterwards explained that people 
of an assured position might associate with whom- 
soever they chose. 

Minty Round was elected treasurer of the Fore- 
side Club without a dissenting vote, and the radi- 
ance of her face was a sight to see. The reaction 
from the embarrassment and strained feeling 
showed itself in exuberant spirits and great free- 
dom of discourse. The club had constituted itself 
the Village Improvement Society of ’Scutney, and 
had recently held a fair to raise funds to beautify 
the village. The fair had met with quite unex- 
pected and very gratifying success, and hence the 
need of a treasurer for the first time in its six 
months of existence. After all expenses had been 
paid, there remained thirty-seven dollars and forty 
cents ; and if that wasn’t a very magnificent sum, 
it was a pretty good one for a ’Scutney fair, that 
had had to struggle with the difficulties that al- 


THE TREASURER OF THE FO RESIDE CLUB. 89 

ways beset a fair, and also with the impression in 
the community that those girls wouldn’t know how 
to manage ; so the girls were proud. With the 
fines and dues added, there were forty-five dol- 
lars and sixty-six cents to place in the treasurer’s 
hands. Minty held her head high as she took the 
envelope containing the money from Luella’s hand. 

“ I — I didn’t tell you why I wanted so much 
to be treasurer,” she said, and the childish de- 
light faded from her face. “ It’s because I’ve got 
to carry on the business. Father’s had another 
shock — this morning. Just as he was hoping to 
do something that would keep us from being so — 
so poor.” She would not let her voice falter, and 
she turned an almost defiant face upon the girls. 

“Did you ever! Isn’t she cool?” whispered 
Viola Hitchings to Polly Rawson ; “to come here, 
like this, when her father had a shock of paralysis 
this morning ? ” 

“I knew ’twould encourage father, and make 
other folks have confidence in me. The — the 
firm will be ‘ A. Round, Herbs and Essences/ just 
as it was before — father’s name is Aaron.” 

“ Minty, has a doctor seen him ? My father 
would go down ” — 

“ Corners folks don’t have doctors ; they can’t 
afford them. Father isn’t the kind that would 
want one, anyway.” 

Luella felt a sudden chill of doubt. These were 


90 


TOM PICKERING OF 'SCUTNEY. 


such very queer people ; perhaps she would better 
have been kind to Minty, as some of the girls had 
suggested, without trying to make her one of 
themselves. When the girls had gone, and Minty 
lingered, Luella regarded a little absently and 
coldly the misty gratitude in her eyes, and re- 
ceived almost without returning the hand-clasp 
that had to do duty for the thanks that were 
choked back by a lump in Minty’s throat ; a bony 
little grip that hand-clasp was ; for the gloves 

— her father’s wedding ones — had been thrust 
into her pocket, the necessity for elegance being 
over. Minty went away feeling vaguely depressed, 
but trying to rally her drooping spirits. 

“ She is afraid that I won’t do it well,” she said 
to herself. “ She knows they will blame her if I 
don’t. And they thought I was queer about father 

— when it’s all for him, if they only knew, and so 
I can keep our heads above water.” 

“There’s just a chance for you — a fighting 
chance,” said a boy’s voice. It came from behind 
the willow hedge, whose spiky shoots were now all 
green and tasselled. It was Tom Pickering’s voice ; 
he and another boy were crouched in a corner be- 
tween the stumps, as if to seclude themselves from 
observation. Minty could see that Tom had his 
hand on the other boy’s shoulder. His voice had 
ceased suddenly at the sound of footsteps. 

A face peered through the greenery — the other 


THE TREASURER OF THE FO RESIDE CLUB. 9 1 

boy’s face. Minty caught sight of it, and her 
heart beat quickly. The head, with a shock of 
rough hair that overhung the forehead, was set 
upon slightly humped shoulders. 

“ It’s Archie Jewkes ! ” said Minty to herself in 
amazement. Archie was a boy from the Corners, 
the ringleader of a reckless gang in that disrepu- 
table neighborhood. He had been arrested for 
stealing a horse, and had escaped from the offi- 
cers, and disappeared from the town three months 
before. Minty had heard only a few days before 
that the sheriff was still in pursuit of him. Tom 
Pickering stepped forth leisurely from the shadow 
of the trees and blew a shrill whistle. 

“ I’ve been making a willow whistle,” he said 
easily ; but there was a flush upon his face, and 
his eyes met hers suspiciously. “ Well, have they 
made you a chieftess of the clan, and put all the 
booty into your keeping ? ” he added facetiously. 

“ I am the treasurer of the Foreside Club,” re- 
turned Minty with dignity. 

“ Well, maybe ’twill turn out well ; you have a 
fighting chance among those girls, as I told you. 
Didn’t you hear me tell you that ? ” Tom’s eyes 
narrowed, anxiously scrutinizing her face. 

“ You didn’t say that to me,” was on the tip of 
Minty’s straightforward tongue, but she didn’t say it. 

“ That’s enough — if you can fight,” she said 
lightly, as she walked on. “ I guess you’ve got 


92 TOM PICKERING OF 'SCUTNEY. 

to be all there is of you in this world, anyhow ! ” 
Tom sauntered towards the house, thinking be- 
tween blasts from his whistle that that advice 
sounded like Macurdy’s. 

Where was Archie Jewkes ? Minty looked back 
after she had passed the willow hedge ; but there 
was no sign of him. 

“ More Corners folks moving in, and what ’Scut- 
ney Foreside is coming to is more than I 
know,” said Delilah, as Tom entered the kitchen. 
“Jewkeses — that’s what I mean; thank goodness 
there ain’t but two of ’em now that young ruffian 
has run away, and is never likely to show his head 
in these parts again. Our folks are making so 
much of Corners people now, that I expect noth- 
ing but what Emmeline Jewkes will be invited here 
to tea ’long of the minister.” 

“Has she really moved here?” asked Tom, 
pocketing his whistle, and meditatively surveying 
his boots. 

“ Ain’t I telling you ? ” said Delilah severely. 
“ I looked out of the window, and saw something 
queer over there on Doughnut Ridge ; first I 
thought ’twas something strayed out of the circus, 
like that Jim boy, or a tin peddler’s wagon gone 
crazy. As soon as it came round the corner I 
found out ’twas that essence peddler’s horse and 
wagon loaded down with old rickety furniture fit 
for nothing but kindling-wood ; and hanging ’round 


THE TREASURER OF THE FORESIDE CLUB. 93 

the sides of the wagon, and even on the horse, 
were pots and pans and kettles. I don’t know 
but what she really has lost her balance since that 
boy cut up so and ran away ; she fairly idolized 
him — poor creature ! ” Delilah’s voice had soft- 
ened suddenly ; but it resumed its sharpness as 
she went on, — 

“ Perched up in front of the wagon, on top of a 
feather bed that was rolled up in a patchwork 
quilt, was Emmeline Jewkes ; and dangling her long 
legs out behind was that young one, Fiducia, that 
she calls Fidy, as if she begrudged her anything 
as near like a Christian name as that — peaked as 
a witch, and with two great hollow black eyes like 
burnt holes in a blanket ! ” 

“ Then Minty Round knew they were coming ; 
they’re friends probably,” said Tom reflectively. 

“P"riends! they’re all one clan, Corners folks; if 
they quarrel among themselves, it’s only just to 
keep their hand in when they haven’t got anybody 
else to quarrel with.” 

Tom sat silent upon the chintz-covered lounge, 
his hands thrust deep into his pockets, and his 
gaze bent abstractedly upon the floor. 

“Your father owns that old Peavy place, just 
a little ways up the other hill, where they’ve 
squatted,” pursued Delilah ; “ and it’s more’n 
likely that he’s letting them have it rent free. 
Let folks be what they will, they’ve only just got 


94 


TOM PICKERING OF 'SCUTNEY. 


to tell him a pitiful story, and he’s as soft as mo- 
lasses candy. For all me, folks that haven’t got 
spunk enough to get may go without ! ” 

Tom had strolled out into the woodshed, but 
Delilah’s flow of language was never dependent 
upon an audience. She continued to pour out 
her contempt for shiftless Corners folks, and her 
almost equal scorn of soft-hearted people who 
helped them ; and then she slipped into the pan- 
try, looking furtively about her, and proceeded to 
fill a basket generously with provisions. 

“ If you live with soft-hearted folks, you might 
as well humor them,” she murmured; “and the 
hollow look of that young one is hard for even 
sensible folks to get over. The last of the boiled 
ham never is eaten in this house ; and that rooster 
was middling tough, if I have got a knack of cook- 
ing them so you wouldn’t hardly know it. Cream- 
pie isn’t proper victuals for Corners folks, and I 
know it ; but — but I should like to see that young 
one’s eyes shine a little ! A little mess of tea — 
for I never knew a sallow, snapping-eyed woman 
that didn’t love it and love it strong ! ” 

Delilah tucked her basket away until the shades 
of evening came. She had her own ideas about set- 
ting a good example. Meanwhile, Tom had gone, 
a little slyly, up into the great unfinished attic 
that extended all over the main body of the house. 
The treasures of many generations had found their 


THE TREASURER OF THE FORESIDE CLUB . 95 

way there, most of them turned by time to useless 
lumber, and palled by dust ; for the doctor cringed 
when Delilah invaded the place with broom and 
scrubbing-brush. Dr. Pickering’s father had also 
been a physician, and the inventor of certain do- 
mestic remedies which had once had great vogue 
in all that region ; and the old attic was half filled 
with bottles. 

Tom rummaged behind piles of furniture and 
ancient trunks and packing-cases, and at length 
brought to light a musty feather bed and some 
old bedquilts. He dragged them into a corner, 
and arranged them, as well as he could, into a 
comfortable couch. Then he made a screen of a 
broken clothes-horse, and set it up with apparent 
carelessness and lack of intention before the im- 
provised bed. “ I don’t suppose he’ll be very fas- 
tidious, poor fellow ! ” he said to himself. 


9 6 TOM PICKERING OF 'SCUTNEY. 


CHAPTER VII. 

MINTY ASKS FOR A CHANCE. 

E MMELINE JEWKES, the new arrival from 
’Scutney Corners, and her ten-year-old daugh- 
ter Fidy, stopped to partake of Minty Round’s 
hospitality, the more freely offered because Minty 
feared that in her heart she was not glad that Em- 
meline had come to be her neighbor. 

“ I wanted to git shet of the Corners,” Minty 
said to herself ; and then resolved to be even in- 
wardly reformed from the Corners dialect, she 
repeated properly, in the seclusion of her small 
pantry, that she wished to begin anew, and be like 
other people. But Minty did not permit herself 
to withhold even a pot of jam which Delilah had 
(ungraciously) presented to her. 

“ I don’t expect your father will ever be any 
better,” said Emmeline Jewkes, peering into the 
inner room as she ate. “ I expect he didn’t have 
a chance to make that medicine come right that 
he was in hopes to get patented ? ” A thinly 
veiled eagerness burned in her sallow face. 

“The directions are not quite plain, and the 


MINTY ASKS FOR A CHANCE. 9 7 

man who sent it to him got killed in a mine. 
He was just going to get it right.” In spite of 
herself, tears gathered in Minty’s eyes as she 
spoke. Some things seemed too much for even 
a brave heart to bear. 

“ Like enough you can make them out, being 
such a scholar,” said Emmeline consolingly. “ I 
can come and help you ; my grandfather was an 
herb doctor. Anyhow, I can sit with your father.” 

“ It’s good of you ; I guess we can help each 
other. Corners folks ought to,” said Minty; and 
she said it heartily. “I’m glad Fidy isn’t going to 
be brought up in ’Scutney Corners,” she added 
even more heartily ; “ it gives you a bad name, if 
nothing more, and then it’s hard work to make 
people believe in you.” 

“ That’s it ! ” said Emmeline Jewkes quickly. 
“ When Monty Griggs’s horse was stolen, they 
said of course some Corners boy was the thief. 
Then, just because Archie had been seen riding it, 
he must have stolen it. He wouldn’t steal, poor 
lamb, any more’n I would! That’s what I’m wait- 
ing and struggling for — for my Archie to come 
back. O Minty Round ! ” her shrill voice broke 
suddenly, and her hard face grew pitiful in its en- 
treaty, “you do believe he’ll come back, don’t you?” 

A vision of the face she had seen through the 
willow leaves arose before Minty’s eyes. His 
mother ought to know, she thought; and yet she 


98 


TOM PICKERING OF ’SCUTNEY. 


dared not tell her, she was so impulsive and ex- 
citable. Perhaps it might even be her duty to tell 
the proper authorities ; for it was true that in the 
background of Minty’s mind there lurked a con- 
viction that Archie Jewkes was guilty, and she was 
afraid, sickeningly, shrinkingly afraid for Luella’s 
sake, that Tom Pickering, who was evidently con- 
cealing him, was guilty too. 

Emmeline Jewkes naturally understood Minty’s 
constrained silence to signify a belief that he 
would never return, and she wept unrestrainedly. 
Fidy unconcernedly ate a great deal of jam, and 
when she was satiated felt the need of diversion ; 
so she went and tickled the tired old horse with 
a straw. Her mother silently and resentfully 
mounted her feather bed. Minty, filled with re- 
morse, ran after the wagon. 

“ I do believe Archie will come back ! ” she 
cried. But the old wagon creaked, and the hang- 
ing things rattled, and the mother went on uncom- 
forted. 

Minty turned, to meet Tom Pickering saunter- 
ing — Tom almost always sauntered — towards 
her. He was whittling his willow whistle to splin- 
ters, and his forehead was tied into a very hard 
knot. “ Mr. Bigsby has planted whole acres of 
buckwheat out back there,” he said, jerking his 
head to indicate the location. “Don’t you want 
to buy my bees ? Buckwheat is good for bees.” 


MINTY ASKS FOR A CHANCE. 


99 


There was unmistakable anxiety in Tom’s tone. 
“Yes, I know I like them, and have just bought a 
new bee-book, — I’ll throw that in, — but I’ve got 
to sell them ! I have reasons ” — his voice was 
shrill with irritation. “ Well, if you must know,” 
— Minty was sure that she had not even looked 
inquisitive, — “I’m hard up, desperately hard up! 
I almost wish father had made me stay on that 
newspaper.” 

Minty made a calculation swiftly by the aid of 
the mathematical bump that had astonished the 
Foreside school, and decided that she could not 
afford to buy the bees, all her available funds be- 
ing needed for the legitimate business of “ A. 
Round, Herbs and Essences.” She resolutely 
shook her head. 

“ Well, some one will if you won’t,” Tom said, 
clearing his brow, and trying to speak lightly. 
“ I’ve got to have money.” He flushed under 
the gaze that Minty bent upon him, although she 
tried to make it indifferent. “ I’ve got to get my 
bicycle repaired, and it’s going to cost almost 
as much as a new one, and a fellow’s boat-club 
dues ” — he faltered, and then his square brows 
met in a scowl. “ If a girl knows the multiplica- 
tion table, she thinks she’s awfully sharp,” he said 
testily. “ You — you saw me riding that horse of 
Monty Griggs’s in the North ’Scutney woods the 
day before it was stolen ; and — and, well I don’t 


100 


TOM PICKERING OF ’SCU TNE Y 


suppose you think I’m a horse-thief, but you’ve 
been putting two and two together ; that’s what 
Luella calls it when she goes to meddling with 
other people’s business.” 

“ I never thought of it, until ” — began Minty, 
and pulled herself up sharply ; it was wiser not to 
let him know that she had seen Archie Jewkes. 
“ I have too much addition of my own to do to at- 
tend to other people’s, and — and” — Minty’s hard 
face softened and her eyes glowed, “ your sister 
has been too good to me for me to want to think 
anything bad of her brother ! ” 

Tom laughed, drawing a quick breath that 
seemed like relief. “ I’m used to being approved 
of for Luella’s sake, and because I must be like 
her, being her twin ; but when we were little they 
used to call us the good twin and the bad one. I’ll 
go and see if old Mrs. Pennypacker, down on the 
river road, won’t buy my bees.” Tom threw away 
the remnants of his whistle, thrust his hands into 
his pockets, and went off. 

“It isn’t my business about Archie Jewkes,” 
said Minty to herself reassuringly as she went 
into the house. She sent for Dr. Pickering to 
attend her father, with a consoling sense of being 
like other folks ; and when the doctor shook his 
head and said that Mr. Round’s whole right side 
was paralyzed, and it might be long before he re- 
covered the use of his limbs, if he ever did, she 


MINTY ASKS FOR A CHANCE. 


IOI 


brought her books home from the Foreside school ; 
and if some tears fell on the algebra — why, it was 
thriftily covered with gingham, and the stain would 
never show. 

Then she went and helped Emmeline Jewkes to 
set her house to rights, cautiously advancing some 
hints as to “ nice ways,” which were not as the 
breath of their nostrils to Corners folks ; while 
Fidy, oppressed with responsibility, and only 
slightly fortified by more jam, sat by the sick 
man, and fulfilled her duty by gazing solemnly at 
him with her mournful black eyes. 

“ I can’t have that young one staring at me,” he 
complained, in his impressive, sepulchral whisper,, 
when Minty returned. “If Teddy Norcross can’t 
come, why I’d rather be left alone.” 

Teddy Norcross was one of the ’Scutney boys, 
who was unable to go to school that summer on 
account of deafness from a hard knock in a base- 
ball game, and just now he was generally available 
as an attendant on the sick man. 

“ Between Teddy and Emmeline Jewkes I sha’n’t 
have to leave him alone much,” said Minty, with 
resolute hopefulness. 

She painted the old wagon that day, with Teddy 
Norcross’s help. She had found some paint in 
the barn, left by a former occupant of the house. 
When the brown gave out they used the blue, and 
when there wasn’t enough of that, the green and 


102 


TOM PICKERING OF \ SCUTNEY, \ 


the red; and Teddy said the effect just suited him. 
And when the lettering was done — why, if the 
letters were not exactly even, at least they didn’t 
look stiff, as Teddy said, and certainly any one 
could read them, which, as Minty stoutly averred, 
was the principal thing. 

“ Folks will see you’re coming a good ways off, 
and that will help the business,” said Teddy sagely. 

Nevertheless, the gay wagon haunted Minty’s 
dreams ; she feared that it would bring disrespect 
upon the Foreside Club. “Some of those girls 
won’t like to see me ’round peddling, anyhow, 
when I’m their treasurer,” she said to herself. 
“ I guess I have only got a fighting chance 
amongst them at the best. But the business 
must come first, for we’ve got to live.” 

The supply of poultry seasoning was exhausted. 
It was a compound invented by the essence ped- 
dler, and very popular among his customers. 
Minty’s first duty was to make a new supply, and 
she accepted Emmeline Jewkes’s offer to come and 
help her make it. They worked all the forenoon, 
in the great unfinished back kitchen, which was 
very convenient as a laboratory. They took the 
savory herbs from the essence peddler’s carefully 
labelled packages, mixed them, and put them up in 
little tin boxes, while Fidy ran constantly to the 
bedroom door to gaze solemnly at the sick man, 
until he irritably ordered the door shut. 


MINTY ASKS FOR A CHANCE. 103 

“There’s something wearing on your father’s 
mind,” remarked Emmeline, pausing in her work 
of sifting herbs to speak impulsively. “ It makes 
him real peevish. You don’t expect it’s that med- 
icine that he’d come so near to making a success 
of ? ” 

“Yes,” said Minty; “that’s it. I’m going to 
try to make it, after I get the business well in 
hand.” 

“I expect you’ve got the — the recipe,” said 
Emmeline, sifting softly, with her face turned 
away. 

“He’s got it — father has ; he doesn’t like to 
let even me look at it. I guess anybody would 
have hard work to get it away from him, even if 
he was asleep. He thinks he shall be able to try 
it again soon — poor father ! ” Minty’s gingham 
apron went hastily across her eyes, so she did not 
catch the expression of Emmeline Jewkes’s face. 

“ Some folks have all the chance — nothing 
ever comes my way,” said Emmeline Jewkes to 
herself. 

Whether it was caused by Emmeline Jewkes’s 
disturbance of mind, or Fidy’s meddling fingers, 
or Teddy Norcross’s effervescent spirits, — Teddy 
was helping, — Minty did not know ; but that day 
a blunder was made which was a great misfortune 
to the business of “A. Round, Herbs and Es- 
sences.” 


104 


TOM PICKERING OF 'SCUTNEY. 


Old Mrs. Pennypacker — the keeper of bees on 
the river road — entertained the minister from 
Mill Creek and his wife at dinner ; and she had 
her gray goose killed to furnish forth the feast. 
The goose was ancient ; but old Mrs. Pennypacker 
cooked it by a famous recipe, warranted to make a 
tough fowl tender, and she bought a box of poul- 
try seasoning of Minty, wherewith to make it 
savory. The gray goose had been a sacrifice that 
brought tears to the eyes of old Mrs. Pennypacker ; 
but she was poor, and determined to do honor to 
the minister, and hold up her head amongst folks, 
as she tearfully explained to Dr. Pickering. Every- 
one who partook of the gray goose was so ill as to 
need Dr. Pickering’s services ! 

Old Mrs. Pennypacker was overwhelmed with 
despair, in the belief that it was the gray goose’s 
toughness that had caused the trouble; but when 
Mrs. Elias Putney of Doughnut Ridge, who had 
roast chicken for dinner, was forced to send for 
Dr. Pickering to attend all her family, and the 
Peterbys in Apple Lane fell ill after eating roast 
turkey, — unseasonably, according to ’Scutney 
ideas, and because their gobbler’s disposition had 
made him unendurable, — then, of course, suspicion, 
that was almost certainty, fell upon Minty’s poul- 
try seasoning. People had bought largely of it on 
the first morning when she drove around in the 
gayly painted wagon. She had recommended it as 


MINTY ASKS FOR A CHANCE. 105 

fresh stock ; and many who sympathized with and 
wanted to help her, had bought it as something 
that they were sure to need some time. All over 
'Scutney, at the Centre, the Crossroads, and the 
Foreside, there was a panic about the poultry sea- 
soning, whose manufacture and sale were Minty's 
first individual efforts in the business line ! 

Dr. Pickering analyzed the seasoning, and found 
in it lobelia — not deadly by any means, but likely 
to cause nausea in large quantities or in certain 
combinations. 

Minty went around and collected her boxes, re- 
turning the money. She held her head high, and 
there were bright spots on her cheek-bones ; the 
hot tears smarted in her eyes, but did not fall. 
She could not explain or apologize ; the great lump 
in her throat forbade. She could not take the mat- 
ter lightly, and act as if it were not much of any- 
thing, as Tom Pickering sagaciously advised. Tom 
had come down on purpose to sympathize with 
her, it appeared ; she came home, and found that 
he had taken Teddy Norcross’s place, giving Teddy 
a longed-for opportunity to go fishing. He was 
dangling his long legs from the window seat, and 
using a palm-leaf fan to keep the flies from the 
essence peddler, who was sleeping. He did it as 
patiently and tenderly as a woman. There were 
very nice things about Tom, Minty thought grate- 
fully, especially considering that he was, as Luella 


io6 


TOM PICKERING OF y SCUTNE Y. 


said, every inch a boy. But while that affair of 
Archie Jewkes and the stolen horse, together with 
Tom’s pressing need of money, remained a mys- 
tery, she didn’t think she should care much about 
his business advice. Luella came down soon after 
Tom had gone, — Luella, with two little sharp 
puckers on her smooth brow that made her look 
like Tom. Minty darkened the room where her 
father still slept, and the two girls went out on 
the porch and talked things over. Luella was 
very sympathetic ; she held Minty’s hard and 
sharp-knuckled little hand in her smooth and soft 
one, and tried to cheer her. 

“ I think it shows that it isn’t the thing for a 
girl to do, Minty,” she said firmly. “To drive a 
horse and wagon like that doesn’t seem exactly 
womanly ; and people won’t have confidence in you 
in a business way, just because you’re a girl. They 
wouldn’t, even if this hadn’t happened ; and to take 
care of the horse — that is dreadful ! ” A delicate 
little shiver of disgust proved the depth of Luella’s 
disapproval. 

“Teddy Norcross helps me,” said Minty faintly. 

“The girls don’t like the wagon,” said Luella 
frankly. “ Of course your belonging to the club, 
and being an officer too, does make a difference.” 

Minty murmured a vague assent ; her heart was 
growing heavier and heavier, and the spots on her 
cheeks redder and redder. 


MINTY ASKS FOR A CHANCE. 107 

“Your father needs you at home, and — and 
we’re planning to have a fair for your benefit ! Of 
course we can’t expect to do quite as well as if 
people hadn’t just spent so much on the other 
fair, but we think every one will want to help 
you.” 

Minty held her head very erect now, and her 
face burned from brow to chin. “ I can help my- 
self ! ” she cried ; and her voice was shrill with the 
sob that she restrained. “ As long as I can help 
myself, I don’t want anybody to help me. You 
mean real well, you and the other girls ; and I 
don’t want to make you ashamed. But after I 
had been helped once, then I should have to be 
helped again — don’t you see ? There are father 
and me to be supported. And I can do it ! I 
have got a business bump, if I did make that 
blunder — you’ll see ! I didn’t want to be that 
kind of a girl, to drive ’round and sell things ; I 
would have liked to be a nice girl, with stylish hair 
and a sash, and pretty white hands ; and I don’t 
think about what girls have a right to do, like 
Selina Craigie ; and I wanted to go to school — oh, 
how I did want to learn ! But when things look 
as if they were meant for me to do, I can’t give 
in. I ain’t a-goin’ to lop onto other folks ! ” When 
she was carried out of herself by strong feeling, 
Minty insensibly dropped into the vernacular of 
the Corners. Luella drew her hand across her 


io8 


TOM PICKERING OF 'SCUTNEY. 


forehead in a perplexed fashion ; it was a narrower 
forehead than Tom’s, and had a delicate tracery of 
blue veins. 

“You don’t think it’s any harm to drive your 
pony,” pursued Minty wistfully ; “ and lots of 
girls sell things ; and I know how to make the 
essences and things. I do, if that dreadful thing 
did happen ! Just let me have a chance, and 
don’t get people to help me, and see if I don’t 
make you and the other girls stop being ashamed 
of me ! ” 

“Well — if that is the way you feel,” said 
Luella, rising to go ; she had the gently cold and 
absent manner that seemed to be natural to her 
at times. But she turned back from the doorway 
with her soft blue eyes misty with trouble. “You 
know I’ll stand by you, Minty — all I can,” she 
said. 

As she walked homeward, Luella came very near 
to regretting her championship of the girl from 
the Corners. She was sensitive to the disapproval 
of the other girls, and the thought that she had 
been the means of bringing disgrace upon the 
club was extremely painful. There was a funny 
side to poor Minty’s trouble. Old Mrs. Penny- 
packer’s gray goose had become a standing joke, 
and the club didn’t like to be connected with a 
laughing-stock ! 

Luella had the natural lack of a cared-for young 


MINTY ASKS FOR A CHANCE. 109 

girl of comprehension of every-day needs ; indeed, 
this belongs to some temperaments in any cir- 
cumstances, so she did not see why Minty and 
her father could not get along without that dread- 
ful peddling, especially with a fair to help them 
out. She felt that Minty was most unpleasantly 
obstinate. Perhaps Polly Rawson’s mother was 
right in saying that Minty probably had not a fine 
nature. Perhaps Delilah was right when she re- 
minded her what the Scriptures said you couldn’t 
make a silk purse out of ! If she had it to do over 
again, Luella said to herself, — she was tired and 
dispirited, and she even went so far as that, — she 
wasn’t sure that she wouldn’t let Corners people 
alone. Tom was worrying her just now. She had 
felt a great responsibility about Tom since Ma- 
curdy Green had gone away, and Tom was not at 
all like himself ; he had something on his mind, 
as Delilah had observed. He was moody and irri- 
table ; and he went on long, mysterious expedi- 
tions, refusing resentfully to give any account of 
himself. And he had borrowed all her money, 
her month’s allowance, and seemed to have no 
intention of paying. Tom borrowed always, as the 
sparks fly upward ; but he had always before been 
sure to pay. 

When a girl had the responsibility of being sis- 
ter — twin sister — to a boy with a busy father and 
no mother, a boy whom sometimes there was no 


IIO TOM PICKERING OF ’ SCUTNEY 

accounting for, she hadn’t much time for benevo- 
lent interest in other people! And when Luella 
reached home in this mood, there was a deputation 
of girls waiting for her, to see what was going to 
be done about that peddling ’Scutney Corners girl, 
whose name was in everybody’s mouth, and whom 
they had elected treasurer of their club. 

Of course a fair would be an agreeable excite- 
ment, and it would make people understand that 
they were helping the girl, rather than associat- 
ing with her ; but she didn’t want the fair ? she 
wouldn’t be helped in that way ? Horrors ! what 
were they going to do with her ? Viola Hitchings 
said that she had never seen any reason why they 
should have her in the club, any more than the 
daughters of the washerwoman, Mrs. Hickey. 

“ She wants to make something of herself, and 
the Hickey girls don’t,” explained Luella. “ It 
seems like pushing drowning people back to see a 
girl struggling to — to be a lady and not help her.” 
Luella spoke with unwonted vehemence, but she 
paused suddenly; it occurred to her that it was 
doubtful whether just what Minty wanted was to 
be a lady. 

“ I think we shall have to ask her to resign,” 
said Viola Hitchings, who felt that her argument 
of the Hickey girls was an invulnerable one. 

“ If her own good feeling doesn’t prompt her to 
do it,” added Roberta Wing. 


MINTY ASKS FOR A CHANCE. 


1 1 1 


“ I wish she would resign,” was on the tip of 
Luella’s tongue ; but Minty’s wistful face arose 
before her ; she remembered her promise to stand 
by her if she could. 

“ I think we ought to give her a chance,” she 
said ; and Polly Rawson agreed with her. 

But the deputation generally went away dissat- 
isfied. They didn’t see what chance there was for 
a girl like that. After that trial was over, Luella 
went into the kitchen, only to hear Delilah grum- 
bling about Corners folks. 

“ She’s been here peeking ’round and asking 
questions, Emmeline Jewkes has. These soft- 
hearted people, like your father, do a sight of 
mischief. Of course I had to carry her some vict- 
uals : your father would have been flinging at me 
that I hadn’t any feeling for poor folks, or was too 
lazy to cook a little mite extra, if I hadn’t ; and 
then up she corned to see what more she can get. 
I stood right in the pantry door so she couldn’t 
get in there ; and she went out into the woodshed, 
poking ’round among the bottles. ‘ If it’s bottles 
you want,’ says I, ‘there’s a cartload of them up 
garret.’ She colored up as if I’d accused her of 
stealing ; and, ‘ What did she want of bottles ? ’ says 
she. ‘ Oh,’ says I, ‘ I thought maybe you wanted 
them for that girl to put up her stuff in that’s 
poisoning everybody.’ She said she hadn’t any 
thing to do with that girl, — that’s what she’s said 


2 


TOM PICKERING OF 'SCUTNEY. 


ever since there was such a fuss about that season- 
ing, — but she didn’t know but she should set up 
a business on her own account, seeing her grand- 
father was an herb doctor. ‘ Business ! ’ says I con- 
temptuous. ‘ Time was when women-folks were 
satisfied to go out washing or take in sewing.’ 
When one of our hens sets out to crow, — kind 
of shrill and wheezy, like a rooster with something 
stuck in his throat, — why, I have ’Lias chop her 
head off, for I know she’ll never be good for any- 
thing.” 

“ Emmeline Jewkes went away laden,” said Lu- 
ella, a faint twinkle appearing in her troubled eyes. 

The color was slightly heightened upon Delilah’s 
cheek-bones. “ If the folks you work for are bound 
to encourage the shiftless, why you ain’t account- 
able ; and I don’t suppose that hollow-looking young 
one ever had a taste of frosted cake before.” 

Meanwhile, Minty was facing her future reso- 
lutely, even though she could not keep her heart 
from heaviness. 

“If I could succeed in spite of the poultry 
seasoning, if ‘A. Round, Herbs and Essences,’ was 
the most prosperous firm in its line in the coun- 
try, why then how differently people would think 
of me ! ” she said to herself sagely. 

She had a vision of great gaudy and gilded 
vans, with prancing steeds, replacing the rickety 
old wagon with its harlequin paint ; she only di- 


MINTY ASKS FOR A CHANCE. 1 1 3 

rected their movements and the work done in a 
great laboratory ; her father was strong and well, 
cured by prosperity, and all the skill that money 
could buy; she wore pink sashes — very wide — 
every day, and her hair was stylish, and there were 
lace curtains in her windows, — one need not stop 
at anything in a dream ; the girls boasted that she 
was treasurer of the Foreside Club ; Luella was 
proud of her ! Minty brushed the bright vision 
aside suddenly, not being of those 

“ who with a slackened will 
Dream of things past or things to be.” 

“ I’ll try to make that medicine that cures every- 
body’s cough. I’ll get father to let me take the 
prescription again, and see if I can’t make out the 
writing. Perhaps I can take it out from under his 
pillow now that he is asleep.” 

It was likely to be a difficult undertaking, as she 
had told Emmeline Jewkes. The peddler’s mind 
seemed centred upon the care of that bit of paper. 
But he was sleeping heavily now — more soundly 
than he had slept since his attack ; and it was bet- 
ter for her to take it in that way if she could, be- 
cause the doctor had warned her against talking 
with him about anything that would agitate him. 
He stirred when she slipped her hand softly under 
his pillow. She had placed the money of the Fore- 
side Club in this hiding-place, as well as the medi- 


1 14 TOM PICKERING OF 'SCUTNEY. 

cal formula, deciding it to be the safest place in 
the house, after lying awake almost all of one 
night because the money was in her father’s old 
trunk with a broken lock ; and hurrying home one 
day, with her route uncompleted, because it was in 
a drawer of their one bureau, which had no locks. 
On that last occasion she had placed it between 
her feather bed and straw mattress, but had after- 
wards felt that it would be safest in the hiding- 
place which her father was absorbed in guarding 
because of his own treasure concealed there. She 
waited until he was quiet, and again slipped her 
hand under the pillow. She drew forth an envel- 
ope, and found the formula in it. But she had 
felt only one envelope ; and she slipped her hand 
under the pillow again, her heart beginning to beat 
quickly with apprehension. Her father started up, 
and fell back with a look of angry alarm, which 
only partially left his face as he recognized her. 

Minty pulled the pillow aside frantically, felt be- 
tween the mattresses, and peered under the bed. 
The envelope containing the club’s money was 
gone ! 

“ Minty, Minty ! what makes you look so ? ” 
whispered her father huskily. “ That long-legged 
fellow — the doctor’s son — didn’t steal the medi- 
cine directions, did he ? ” 


THE MISSING FUNDS. 


115 


CHAPTER VIII. 

THE MISSING FUNDS. 

O, no, father ! your paper is safe — see ! ” 



1 M Minty held up the medical formula reassur- 
ingly, and the sick man lay back upon his pillow 
with a look of relief upon his worn face. “ But — 
but what made you think that Tom Pickering had 
taken it ? ” 

“ He’s been here when you’ve been away, strad- 
dling the table and staring at me, sending Teddy 
Norcross off fishing, — who knows what he wants? 
And when there’s anything so valuable as that 
paper ’round, it isn’t safe to let everybody in. I 
went to sleep, didn’t I ? Though I didn’t mean 
to till you came home. I don’t want those boys 
’round, any of them. You and I will get along 
alone, Minty, until I get able to make that medi- 
cine ! ” 

Minty hesitated to tell him of her loss. She had 
told him what she had hidden under his pillow with 
the other envelope ; but the fund of a girls’ club 
had evidently seemed of but little consequence to 
him compared to the treasure that was to bring 


II 6 TOM PICKERING OF ’ SCUTNEY . 

him fortune, and he had altogether forgotten it. 
But it would agitate him to know of her loss, at 
least because it would make him feel that his pre- 
cious bit of paper was not safe. So she constrained 
herself to silence, and kept her white face averted 
from her father’s eyes, and tried to steady her 
trembling hands when she gave him his food. 

When she had bolstered him up with pillows, 
to eat his dinner, she made another search for the 
missing envelope, under pretence of arranging the 
bed. It was all in vain. The money was not to 
be found. As soon as her domestic duties would 
allow, she went out on the porch, where she had 
sat with Luella, and tried to face this new disaster 
like a girl who must have courage — and who had 
a mathematical bump. 

It was entirely unlikely that any one had been 
there, except Teddy Norcross, possibly Fidy Jewkes, 
and — Tom Pickering. Minty said that name to 
herself with a little shiver of dread. As soon as 
she became aware of her loss she had felt the 
shadow of that suspicion, and refused to admit it 
to herself. Her father’s instant distrust of Tom 
had shocked her ; and yet even before he had ex- 
pressed it she knew she had thought of Tom’s un- 
explained presence there, and of his declared need 
of money. Tom had associated, more than any 
one at the Foreside knew, with the Corners boys. 
Perhaps that was the very root of the suspicion. 


THE MISSING FUNDS. 


II 7 

Teddy Norcross was tried and true in the mat- 
ter of honesty. His fathers reputation in ’Scut- 
ney was like that of the honest blacksmith in the 
song. Under Fidy Jewkes’s preternaturally solemn 
demeanor lurked tricky impulses, but she would be 
likely to be honest. Minty had always heard that 
Emmeline was, and Corners people knew each 
other. 

Even as she thought of her, Fidy’s spidery little 
figure swung itself over a stone wall into Minty’s 
bean patch. There was a short cut down the hill, 
hampered only by two stump fences and a stone 
wall, delights to Fidy, whose tastes were acrobatic. 
Fidy was dazzlingly clean, — an unwonted condi- 
tion, — and arrayed in pink calico and a brilliantly 
beribboned new hat, and she carried a gingham 
bag with a book in it. 

“ See me ! ” she cried breathlessly. “ I go to 
school. I began this morning. Phippsy Towle, 
the milkman, carried me with his cans ; now Pm 
going to walk.” 

“Then you were not down here this morning?” 
said Minty involuntarily. Emmeline, she knew, 
had been to Hebron to see if she could get work 
to take home from the stocking-factory. 

“ Of course I wasn’t. I can’t stop to fool now 
I go to school,” returned Fidy with importance, as 
she tramped ruthlessly through the beans, — an- 
other short cut. 


1 1 8 TOM PICKERING OF 'SCUTNEY. 

Before long Teddy Norcross came up from the 
river with a fine string of perch. Teddy’s cherubic 
sun-burned face glowed with a fisherman’s honest 
pride ; it wore no trace of guilt. If Teddy could 
be guilty of anything worse than a boyish prank, 
Mother Nature had stamped him deceitfully. Per- 
haps she does that sometimes, or else our eyes are 
unskilled to read her warnings; but Minty knew 
that Teddy was not the one. That was what she 
said to herself. And the two envelopes had been 
there when she went away in the morning. She 
had made sure of that, as she always did, when she 
arranged her father’s pillows the very last thing. 

“Teddy! Teddy! did you stay with father all 
the time ? ” she called after the boy, whom she 
had scarcely thanked for the generous share of his 
fish that he had bestowed upon her. 

“All the time until Tom Pickering came. He 
didn’t go to school because he had a headache. 
He made me go fishing ; he said he could stay 
just as well as not,” said Teddy, stoutly defending 
himself from the possible accusation of neglect. 

The meetings of the Foreside Club were held 
fortnightly; the first one since her election as 
treasurer was to be held the following day. What 
would happen when she should give the disgrace- 
ful account of her stewardship ? All the hard 
possibilities arose before Minty’s mental vision. 
Would they believe her, and would suspicion fall 


THE MISSING FUNDS. 


l 9 


on Tom ? Would the theft be brought home to 
him? No, no; anything but that — anything to 
herself ! She hugged her knees tightly with her 
clinched hands, sitting, a queer, stubborn little 
figure, on the three-legged stool in the dilapidated 
porch, holding back the tears from her smarting 
eyes as she looked over her struggling little gar- 
den, and the unsympathetic sunshiny blue of the 
distant river and sky. 

“ She tried to give me a chance ; nobody else 
ever did or would. If it don’t come to anything, 
if I ain’t ever anything but Corners folks, if they 
say I’m a thief, and put me in prison — why, I’ll 
never let anything hurt Luella ! ” 

This was an exalted, an heroic mood — scarcely 
any one is so poor-spirited as not to know such ! 
Was there staying power behind it for the cruel 
days of undeserved disgrace and defeat ? 

“ I must do the best I can, for father’s sake ; 
he comes first. But they say her father is afraid 
Luella has a weak heart, like her mother, and she 
is bound up in Tom ; it would kill her to know.” 

Then the practical nature of the girl, who, with 
scarcely any training, was the best mathematician 
in the Foreside school, asserted itself. “ He can’t 
be bad clear through — Luella’s brother. I’ll try 
to make him give it back ! ” 

A ray of hope came with this resolve, as hope 
always comes to an energetic nature with the idea 


120 


TOM PICKERING OF 'SCUTNEY. 


of something to be done. But when she came to 
think of it, there were difficulties about trying to 
make Tom restore the money ! Of course he 
would be furiously angry, or behave as if he 
were, at the mere suggestion of her suspicion. 
He would tell Luella, and it would be only nat- 
ural that Luella should believe him. The club 
girls, too, would believe him — who would not, 
since there was no proof, but only the word of 
a girl from the Corners against his ? If Luella 
should not believe him, if she should suspect that 
he had taken it — why, that would be worst of 
all ! Mathematical brains seemed to offer no help 
in this trouble, and poor Minty’s were almost dis- 
tracted. When she went on her route the next 
morning, the coldness with which people greeted 
her, and their general refusal to buy her wares, — 
having that little matter of the poultry seasoning 
still fresh in their minds, — scarcely added to 
the heaviness of her heart ; and when, late in the 
afternoon, she went up to Dr. Pickering’s to the 
club meeting, she was still unable to decide upon 
any plan of action. She was a straightforward 
soul, but she was willing to temporize now. She 
hoped that nothing would be said about the money 
that would force her to confess that she had lost 
it. But the very first business that came before 
the meeting, as the president announced in a pre- 
cise and important manner, was the consideration 


THE MISSING FUNDS. 


12 


of the proper disposal of the club’s funds ! And 
poor Minty grew sick and cold with dread. 

There were found to be differences of opinion, 
and an animated discussion arose. Some of the 
girls thought they should be public-spirited, and 
spend the money upon the adornment of the pub- 
lic library grounds at ’Scutney Centre, while others 
were strongly in favor of beginning at home, and 
ornamenting the grounds of the new Foreside 
schoolhouse, or giving the money towards the 
purchase of a bell for the Foreside chapel. The 
treasurer took no part in the discussion ; most of 
the girls looked at her askance, or ignored her 
entirely. If they showed such strong feeling be- 
cause she had allowed lobelia to get into her poul- 
try seasoning, and painted her old wagon in too 
many colors, what would they do when they knew 
the worst ? thought Minty. 

While the debate was at its height, Tom Picker- 
ing leaned in at the window, as he had done on 
the day when the treasurer was elected. Tom was 
a favorite ; and, although the girls made a pretence 
of driving him away, he stayed, and was useful in 
keeping down a threatening heat in the discussion 
by his jocular interpolations and suggestions. But 
Tom lacked his usual spirits to-day, — any one 
could see that, — and his wit was a little labored. 
His boyish face looked worn, and the queer little 
pucker was constantly between his brows. 


122 


TOM PICKERING OF ’ SCUTNEY. 


“I’ll tell you what to do!” he exclaimed sud- 
denly, after a suggestion that the money should be 
offered as a prize for the best essay on bee-keep- 
ing or colt-raising, which he declared he should be 
sure to win. “ Give it to me to invest for you ! 
I have a famous business bump ; if you don’t be- 
lieve it, see how well I’ve done with my bees, 
when old Mrs. Pennypacker said hers died in debt 
for their rent.” 

Minty had turned involuntarily, and given him 
a swift glance. As he met it, his face crimsoned, 
although he went on talking with apparent uncon- 
cern. After a moment he looked at her again de- 
fiantly. “ The treasurer looks as if she didn’t want 
me to have it,” he said. “ Maybe she thinks she 
has a better business bump herself.” A slight, 
suppressed titter ran around the room, followed 
by an embarrassed pause. How could they help 
thinking of the unfortunate poultry seasoning ? 

“ You haven’t said what you thought we ought 
to do with the money, Minty,” said Luella, with a 
blazing indignation in her gentle face. 

“ It was mean to say that, but I didn’t think,” 
murmured Tom penitently for Luella’ s ear. “ All 
the same, she mustn’t look at me like that, right 
before everybody ! ” he added to himself. 

“You helped so much about the fair too,” pur- 
sued Luella ; “ and your father gave us those nice 
essences that sold so well.” 



Minty had turned Involuntarily, and given Him 
a Swift Glance. 






































































































THE MISSING FUNDS. 


123 


When Luella’s righteous indignation was aroused 
she forgot that she had almost wished that she had 
never troubled herself about that girl from the 
Corners. Minty held her head up ; loyalty to Lu- 
ella demanded that she should not make her more 
ashamed of her than was inevitable, but the lump 
in her throat would not let her speak. That fair 
had been the one good time of her life ; she had 
joyfully reckoned it as the beginning of her 
chance — and now ! 

Selina Craigie came to the rescue with a bright 
idea. She proposed that they should keep the 
money until fall, and then give a concert, by which 
they might raise sufficient additional funds to buy 
the chapel bell “ all themselves.” 

There was an unusual degree of musical talent 
in the club. Polly Rawson could play the violin 
more than passably ; Selina Craigie had a knack 
with the banjo ; Stella Crary was in training for a 
professional pianist ; and little fat Abby Atwood, 
who was a dunce at school, had a voice like a 
bobolink. The Foreside boys would help, even if 
they did have their own opinion of girls’ clubs ; 
and some of them had a minstrel talent, and Orrin 
Seaver was a fine elocutionist. It was soon set- 
tled that the Foreside could cover itself with glory, 
and buy the bell ; and the treasurer was directed 
to deposit the funds in the ’Scutney savings-bank 
until they should be needed for the concert. 


124 


TOM PICKERING OF 'SCUTNEY. 


“ Some one ought to go with her to the bank ; 
she might go in her wagon ! how funny it would 
look/’ whispered Viola Hitchings, when the meet- 
ing was breaking up, and the girls were gathered 
into groups. 

“I think some one ought to have the care of 
the bank-book. What will she know about it ? ” 
said Roberta Wing, whose cousin was a clerk in 
the bank. 

Minty ran away without a word to any one. She 
drew a long, sobbing breath of relief as she ran. 
It was a reprieve ; there was a possibility that she 
might earn the money, and replace it before its 
loss was discovered ! But there would be ques- 
tions asked about the depositing of the money ; 
they would probably wish to see the bank-book. 
Minty knew that there were such things as bank- 
books. Lycurgus Tribble at the Corners always 
boasted, when he had been drinking, that he had 
once possessed one ; but no one believed that he 
had. It was the simple Corners policy to spend 
your money if you had any. If only any one but 
Tom Pickering had taken the money ! It would 
be the straightforward, honest way to tell of the 
loss ; and in every drop of her blood Minty loved 
the honest, straightforward way. 

Emmeline Jewkes was waiting for her at her 
gate; Teddy Norcross had received strict orders 
to admit no visitors in her absence. 


THE MISSING FUNDS. 


125 


“ I should have liked a chance to rest my weary 
bones, but that young one wouldn’t let me in any 
more’n if I was p’ison,” said Emmeline resentfully. 
“ It don’t seem real neighborly to treat folks so. 
There — there ain’t any reason more’n common, 
is there ? ” Emmeline gazed at her furtively, nar- 
rowing her snapping eyes keenly. 

“Father thinks people stare at him,” said Minty 
evasively. She dismissed Teddy Norcross, and in- 
vited Emmeline, absently, to come in. While she 
stood in the doorway, Tom Pickering sauntered 
towards the gate. Minty’s face flamed ; she drew 
Emmeline in hurriedly, and shut the door almost 
in Tom’s face. 

“ Well, I declare ! ” gasped Emmeline Jewkes. 

“I — I didn’t feel as if I could stand him just 
now. I’m all worked up about something,” fal- 
tered Minty, whose sturdy self-control was on the 
verge of giving way. 

“ I supposed you thought a sight of the doctor’s 
folks. He hasn’t been doing anything you don’t 
like, has he ? ” 

There were queer reddish sparks in Emmeline’s 
dark eyes ; her face was sharp with eagerness. 

“ It has worried me about the poultry seasoning, 
and — and belonging to the club is kind of wear- 
ing, when they’re so different, and I’ve made them 
ashamed of me — and I didn’t feel just like talk- 
ing to Tom.” 


126 TOM PICKERING OF 'SCUTNEY. 

Minty was not good at subterfuges ; Emmeline’s 
face grew only more eager and inquisitive. 

“ Tom Pickering used to come out to the Cor- 
ners ; they said his father didn’t like to have him 
go with the Corners boys ; but I guess they’re as 
good as he is. He and my Archie appeared to 
take a great fancy to one another. I suppose 
’twas because they both thought so much of dumb 
creatures. Now, I kind of think he led Archie 
into mischief.” 

“ I always thought Archie was honest,” said 
Minty slowly. “ I knew he was inclined to be 
wild and reckless, but I thought he was honest.” 

“And you know Tom Pickering ain’t!” cried 
Emmeline in sudden excitement. “ I know he 
ain’t, but I wa’n’t going to tell you how I knew it 
till I’d made up my mind what to do about it ! ” 

Minty clasped her hands around her knees, and 
regarded Emmeline with a pitiful anxiety in her 
small, sharp-featured face. 

“ I ain’t one that tells all they know,” pursued 
Emmeline ; “ and, besides, though you appear 
friendly, I hain’t never got a ’ real nearness to 
you, Minty Round ! You’d rather be Foreside 
folks than Corners folks, and you’d rather asso- 
ciate with them ! But seeing you appear to have 
found out what Tom Pickering is, I may as well 
tell you what I know. I was down in the woods 
by the river, ’long back of old Mrs. Pennypack- 


THE MISSING FUNDS. 


127 


er’s” — Minty winced a little at the name; old 
Mrs. Pennypacker’s little granddaughter had made 
faces at her through the picket fence, and hooted 
after her as she went by, ever since that affair of 
the gray goose. “ I was after goldthread, — Fidy’s 
got canker in her mouth, — and I thought as long 
as I was there I’d go down to the edge of the 
swamp to see if there was any lobelia that I could 
get, come September ; there’s nothing like lobelia 
for coughs and colds. 

“ Old Mrs. Pennypacker was down in her pump- 
kin patch ; and she called after me, * You’d better 
not go near that old barn on Dr. Pickering’s farm 
down by the woods,’ says she. ‘The man that 
lived there disappeared and never was heard from, 
and there are dreadful queer noises there. I heard 
’em once myself when I was hunting a stray tur- 
key, ’long on the edge of the evening.’ 

“ ‘ I’ve lived amongst ’Scutney Corners folks. If 
I can stand them, I guess I needn’t be afraid of 
ghosts,’ says I ; and I kept right along. I didn’t 
expect to hear a thing, for I’ve heard tell of ghosts 
before ! And at first I didn’t ; but pretty soon 
there came a kind of a knocking — knocking, in- 
side of that old barn ! It’s right down on the edge 
of the woods, you know, a lonesome place, where 
scarcely anybody ever goes ; and for a minute I 
felt kind of creepy. But I’ve had too much wras- 
tling with flesh and blood to be afraid of my shadow, 


128 


TOM PICKERING OF 'SCUTNEY. 


and I was bound I’d get what I’d come for. Be- 
sides, I got kind of curious to hear the noise again. 
I went a little nearer to the barn, and when the 
noise came again ’twas a kicking. Thinks I, I 
don’t know much about the ways of ghosts ; but if 
that ain’t a horse, I’m beat ! ” 


MINTY'S SORE TRIAL. 


129 


CHAPTER IX. 
minty’s sore trial. 

M INTY still clasped her knees and leaned for- 
ward, listening intently. “ I went up to the 
barn window,” Emmeline continued ; “ but ’twas 
covered with an old linen carriage-duster so close 
that there wa’n’t a chink to peek through. And 
’twas as still as death ! I began to think I’d come 
away without the goldthread. You take it right 
near dark, lonesome woods, and after hearing such 
foolish stories, and the most sensible are apt to 
feel crinkly down their spinal columns. I was 
going away, — kind of fast, I will own, — when 
there came a horse’s neigh from the barn, just as 
natural and cheerful sounding a neigh as ever you 
heard ! I went back, and tried to peek in at every 
nook and cranny of that old barn to see that horse. 
I couldn’t see it ; but I knew well enough — it 
seemed to come to me like a flash when I heard 
the neigh — that ’twas Monty Griggs’s horse that 
Tom Pickering had stolen and hid there ! And 
here he is strutting around like a cock-turkey, 
with his hands in his pockets, while my poor in- 


130 


TOM PICKERING OF 'SCUTNEY. 


nocent lamb is being hunted by sheriffs all over 
the country ! ” 

Emmeline’s metaphors might be mixed, but her 
motherly indignation was genuine and impressive. 
Minty was silent, a wave of color rising slowly 
over her anxious face. 

“You ain’t going to doubt it now, after — after 
you’ve found out what that fellow is ? ” cried Em- 
meline angrily. 

Minty hesitated. She felt as if she ought to tell 
Emmeline that Tom was protecting and conceal- 
ing her son ; but she feared the consequences, know- 
ing Emmeline’s excitable nature. Moreover, she 
was too worn out and bewildered to trust herself 
to decide what to do. 

“ If the horse is there, it can be proven that 
Archie is innocent, and he — he can come home,” 
she said slowly. There was so much sympathy in 
her face and tone that Emmeline was appeased. 

“ I suppose they could say it wa’n’t that horse,” 
she said reflectively. “ I know well enough that 
it’s going to be hard for folks from the Corners to 
hold their own against the Pickerings.” 

“And I can’t afford to quarrel with the doc- 
tor’s folks — just yet,” she added to herself on 
her homeward way. She had found Minty un- 
satisfactorily non-committal, and had soon taken 
herself away. “That old-maid hired girl has got 
a disposition just as crinkly as her hair, and she’s 


MINTY'S SORE TRIAL. 


131 

all one with them in feeling. You’ve got to pre- 
tend you think a sight of them, and ain’t found out 
that she’s kind-hearted, to get her to help you ! ” 
Emmeline’s sallow face wore an unwonted flush, 
and its weak outlines were almost lost in an ex- 
pression of grim resolution. “ I ain’t going to 
heave away what it appears as if Providence had 
thrown in my way ! ” she said to herself. “ And 
one of these days, if I can make things turn out 
as I expect to, — and I’ve got doctoring talent, I 
know I have, being so much like grandfather, — 
why, I’ll take Minty Round into partnership, and 
there sha’n’t any Foreside folks look down on her 
or me ! I’ll get my poor lamb home, and prove to 
folks that he ain’t a thief, — but O land of mer- 
cies ! I hain’t got him ! I hain’t got him ! ” 

Her hard face broke like an ice pool in a sud- 
den thaw, and her features worked convulsively 
like a crying child’s. “ Poor struggling Corners 
folks, fighting for their only son,” she murmured, 
with the self-pity which is apt to be the strongest 
emotion of a weak nature in misfortune, “the Lord 
ain’t going to be hard on them ! ” 

Minty started up suddenly from her deep reflec- 
tion a few minutes after Emmeline had gone. 

“She mustn’t tell of Tom! I must persuade 
her not to tell — for Luella’s sake ! ” Minty made 
one bound down the steps on her way — Fidy’s 
way, across lots — to Emmeline Jewkes’s. But 


132 TOM PICKERING OF 'SCUTNEY. 

she stopped suddenly, clinching her hands tightly 
as if to hold herself back. “ I couldn’t persuade 
her. And she ought not to let Tom escape and 
her son be hunted as a thief ! ” 

’Scutney Corners had its own standards of right ; 
a reckless loyalty was one of them. Even Minty’s 
clear eyes were in danger of being blinded by the 
Corners atmosphere, through which they had al- 
ways seen life. “ And I can’t tell her that I saw 
Archie and Tom together ! Tom must do it when 
she accuses him — if I wasn’t dreaming, as some- 
times I almost think I was ! It seems like Em- 
meline to be in a hurry to accuse him — but she 
doesn’t seem to be.” 

Early the next morning, however, Minty saw 
Emmeline Jewkes going up the hill to Dr. Picker- 
ing’s. Emmeline walked resolutely, indeed with 
a martial stride, which she sometimes assumed, 
and did not turn her head. 

“ Now she is going to tell Dr. Pickering about 
the horse,” thought Minty, with a throb of anx- 
iety. But Minty was mistaken. Emmeline did 
not ask for Dr. Pickering. She opened the screen 
door of the kitchen, and made her way unan- 
nounced into the cool and fragrant little dairy, 
through whose window she had espied Delilah. 
The last pat of butter had just taken on a red- 
clover stamp under Delilah’s deft hand ; but Deli- 
lah did not greet her visitor over-cordially. The 


MINTY'S SORE TRIAL. 


133 


widow’s peak, which Tom declared to be the most 
expressive feature of Delilah’s face, seemed to rise 
higher into the crinkles of her hair, and her nos- 
trils expanded in a faint but expressive sniff. De- 
lilah had her own opinion of Corners people, as we 
know ; and, moreover, she declared that she didn’t 
know what to make of Emmeline Jewkes, — she 
wasn’t flesh nor fowl nor good red herring. Em- 
meline’s manner on this occasion was ingratiating. 

“ I’ve made up my mind that I will take some 
of those bottles, seeing you’re so kind as to offer 
them,” she said. “ I won’t trouble you any ; if 
you’ll let me go right up into the attic I’ll pick 
out the sizes that I want. I — I’m thinking of 
putting up some medicine.” 

Delilah started ; her large, swarthy cheeks were 
slowly stained with a brilliant carmine. She turned 
and looked keenly at Emmeline. 

“ She ain’t sharp to see through folks ; crinkly 
hair and considerable fat don’t ever mean that,” 
said Emmeline to herself shrewdly. “Anyhow, 
she couldn’t know that I was after the old doc- 
tor’s recipe for cough medicine, for I haven’t 
breathed it to a soul.” And Emmeline bore the 
keen scrutiny well. Delilah drew a long breath. 

“ Oh, la ! there’s bottles enough in the wood- 
shed,” she said easily; “and just the same shapes 
and sizes that there are up garret.” 

“ I only thought maybe they’d be kind of dusty 


134 


TOM PICKERING OF 'SCUTNEY. 


out there, and not so many to pick from,” said 
Emmeline meekly. “ ’Twas you that mentioned 
my going up into the attic after them.” 

“Ell fetch you down a whole lot,” said Delilah 
quickly. “ ’Tisn’t a fit place for anybody to go 
into, for the doctor won’t have things meddled 
with up there, and he shivers if I go near them 
with a broom ; so the dust just collects.” 

“ If that’s so, I’ll just take a few out of the 
woodshed,” said Emmeline, in a tone that con- 
veyed only a slight sense of injury. She stepped 
quickly into the woodshed, and threw a door and 
window wide ; the snapping eyes were near-sighted, 
and Emmeline had been told that old Dr. Pick- 
ering had been accustomed to label his famous 
cough sirup with all its ingredients, lest its ap- 
pearance might resemble that of the patent reme- 
dies which his professional soul abhorred. 

Delilah hurried out, freely expressing house- 
wifely anxiety lest the unscreened window which 
Emmeline had opened should let in the flies, and 
officiously taking down bottles, giving Emmeline 
no time to examine their labels. Emmeline re- 
marked, with chilly humility, that she would only 
take a few ; they didn’t appear to be exactly what 
she wanted. 

“ She’s after something more’n bottles ! ” said 
Delilah to herself, watching from her dairy window 
the gaunt figure, whose plaid-shawled, stooping 


MINTY'S SORE TRIAL. 


135 


back was expressive of a kind of resentful pa- 
tience to Delilah’s already sore conscience. “But 
there ! maybe some things are making me over- 
suspicious — I never was any hand at hiding and 
deceiving — and her cheeks are as hollow as her 
young one’s eyes — and a pat from a churning we 
never shall miss. Here, Emmeline Jewkes ! ” she 
called, and Emmeline walked slowly back to the 
window. “They say June butter’s wholesomer 
than any other,” said Delilah gruffly, handing out 
one of her dainty clover-stamped pats folded in a 
Japanese napkin. 

“ I ain’t one that asks favors, but, when they’re 
offered ” — said Emmeline, dealing a small stab as 
she took the butter. She turned abruptly away, 
going across the lawn with her nervous, jerking 
gait more pronounced than usual. 

“ It’s the doctor’s butter, and his doings, as you 
might say,” murmured Delilah ; “ for I ain’t one 
to heave away good victuals on such shiftless 
folks. Anyhow, she didn’t get into that attic, and 
she won’t ! ” 

Emmeline’s nervous excitement carried her home 
so fast that she panted heavily, and leaned against 
the rail that did duty for a gate before her humble 
dwelling. 

“I’m going to get into that attic ! ” she said to 
herself with grim resolution. “There ain’t any- 
body crinkly haired and fat can keep me out ! ” 


I36 TOM PICKERING OF 'SCUTNEY. 

Meanwhile, Minty had gone on her route with a 
ray of hope lighting her darkness. She could not 
make out the obscure names in that medical for- 
mula which her father’s friend had sent him to 
make his fortune with ; but she had, by dint of 
much logic and persuasion, gained her father’s 
consent to her plan of submitting the formula to 
the Hebron druggist, that he might decipher it, if 
possible, and advise and perhaps help them about 
getting a patent, and putting the medicine upon 
the market. The essence peddler had felt as if 
a precious secret were being wrested from him, 
and had needed much persuasion ; but his respect 
for Minty’s business bump, together with a sense 
of his own helplessness, finally prevailed. 

Minty took the direct road to Hebron, feeling 
this business to be most important, and deferring 
all her selling for her homeward way. 

“ Oh, are you carrying our money to the bank ? ” 
It was Roberta Wing’s voice from the sidewalk 
that broke in upon a delightful vision, in which 
Minty had seen the club’s money restored, and her- 
self the maker and proprietor of a cough medi- 
cine that made people quite forget the poultry 
seasoning, or that she had ever been a girl of 
’Scutney Corners. “You get my cousin to do 
the business for you ! He will, because he knows 
I belong to the club, and it may save you time ; 
it’s a pretty busy place in bank hours.” 


MINTY'S SORE TRIAL . 


137 


Roberta Wing’s sense of importance in having 
a cousin in the bank, and knowing all about it, had 
made her too eager to wait for a response to her 
question. 

Yet Minty went on her way with the guilty 
consciousness that the silence that gives consent 
had been hers. She was going to the Hebron 
Savings Bank to deposit the club’s money ! She 
felt an impulse to turn her horse’s head, to go 
clattering back in her gaudy, rickety old wagon, 
at which people turned to look, and to cry out to 
Roberta Wing that she was not going to deposit 
the club’s money — that she had lost it ! Then 
she could feel once more like Minty Round, who, 
although born and bred in the Corners, had al- 
ways been truthful and honest. 

But her spirit quailed ; it had meant so much 
to her to belong to that club ! To proclaim that 
she had lost its money and disgraced it would be 
to lose all the chance there was for her. And 
there was the hope that the druggist might be in- 
duced to help about the medicine ; might even be 
willing to advance money for a share in it. She 
had a paper on which a great many miners had 
signed their names in testimony of its efficacy. 

So she drove on, saying to herself that she was 
no longer the old Minty Round, and never could 
be again, but that she was still a girl who had a 
fighting chance. 


138 TOM PICKERING OF 'SCUTNEY. 

“ Didn’t she look very queer?” said Polly Raw- 
son, who had joined Roberta just as she accosted 
Minty riding by on the old wagon. “ She was 
so white that her freckles looked as large as the 
spots on a tiger lily.” 

“ I suppose she is scared at the idea of going 
to the bank — a Corners girl ! ” said Roberta. “ I 
think it’s a disgrace to the club for her to go in 
that way. I don’t know what my cousin will 
think; she looks as if she had strayed out of a 
circus procession.” 

“Or the Fourth of July Antiques and Horri- 
bles,” lightly laughed Polly Rawson, whose cousin 
was not in the bank, and who was therefore not 
weighed down by the disgrace. But Roberta did 
not laugh ; she was thinking how much more ap- 
propriate it would have been — especially in view 
of her family connection with the bank — to have 
elected her treasurer of the Foreside Club. 

The druggist read Minty’s formula easily enough ; 
and then he looked, with a half-wondering, half- 
pitying smile, at Minty’s eager, anxious face. 

“ It’s an old domestic prescription, a very good 
thing of its kind, but I don’t think you could get 
it patented, and it wouldn’t pay if you could ; the 
market is flooded with just such things. It might 
pay you to put up some of it, — in the proper sea- 
son, — and sell it with your herbs and essences,” 
he added, seeing in Minty’s face how heavy a blow 


MINTY'S SORE TRIAL. 


139 


he had given her. He was a kindly man ; and he 
thought that Minty would not be likely to inter- 
fere much with his own trade. 

“ I shall be wanting some sage and spearmint,” 
he called after her consolingly, as she went out. 
He had often bought herbs of her when hers were 
fresh from her garden, or his stock had run low 
unexpectedly. But Minty could not be consoled ; 
she only realized — as we all do — how great her 
hope had been when it failed her. She mounted 
her wagon in a kind of numb despair, oblivious 
even of the jeering boys who were always at- 
tracted to her equipage when she ventured into 
Hebron. She forced herself mechanically to the 
selling of her wares, and the effort helped her — as 
effort always does. Queerly enough, she thought, 
people were especially kind on this day. She did 
not know that the wan, pinched look of her face 
was enough to touch even a hard heart. Even 
those who, ever since < the affair of the poultry 
seasoning, had shut the door coldly upon her, 
bought of her to-day, and with encouraging words, 
which cheered her a little. Yet when they knew ! 
when she was suspected of being a thief ! She 
could not help thinking over and over. 

Even the very queer thing that happened at old 
Mrs. Pennypacker’s could only hearten her for a 
little while. She had shrunk from going by there 
to-day, on account of the little grand-daughter who 


140 


TOM PICKERING OF 'SCUTNEY. 


made faces through the fence pickets, — small 
wounds being grievous to a sore heart ; but as 
business led her through the river road, she would 
not allow herself to flinch. Old Mrs. Pennypacker 
looked at her, she thought, with a frown, from be- 
hind her syringa bush ; but after she had passed 
the house she heard, above the rattle of her 
wagon, the shrill, piping voice of the small grand- 
child. Minty stopped, doubtfully, and expectant 
of hostilities. 

“ I don’t want to buy anything particular, 
Minty,” said old Mrs. Pennypacker kindly, from 
the gate. “ But I thought you looked tired, and 
maybe you hadn’t had your dinner yet, and a piece 
of my strawberry shortcake might be kind of con- 
soling. Pm a masterhand to make strawberry 
shortcake.” 

Minty couldn’t eat the strawberry shortcake, 
but tears of gratitude at the kindness rose to her 
eyes. And then old Mrs. Pennypacker kissed and 
cried over her. “ The minister and I were talk- 
ing about you,” she said, — “the one that ate the 
gray goose and was terrible sick ; and he said 
as like as not you ain’t to blame, and he wouldn’t 
have anything that we said hurt you for the 
world. I know, Minty, you do have a real hard 
time, and Pm just as ready to buy of you as I 
ever was ; and I shall tell folks so.” 

After that Minty did eat a little of the straw- 


MINTY'S SORE TRIAL. I41 

berry shortcake, just to please Mrs. Pennypacker. 
Then she and the maker of faces — who was in a 
state of manifest alarm lest she should be told of 
— kissed and made friends, and Minty drove away 
with her heart warmed and comforted. But — 
when they knew ! when they knew ! 

A knot of girls was gathered at the corner of 
the Doughnut Ridge road, just above Dr. Picker- 
ing’s. Dilly Pritchard called out to Minty as she 
was driving by. Dilly had been the best mathe- 
matician in the Foreside school before the girl 
from the Corners arrived ; but Dilly was of a gen- 
erous nature, far above the petty meanness of 
envy, and had always been of those club girls 
who tried to make Minty “one of ourselves.” 
“ Have you heard the beautiful news ? ” called 
Dilly. “Dr. Pickering will add to our forty-five 
dollars enough to buy the chapel bell, so we can 
have it in time for the ’Scutney Centennial next 
month. And the bell will have our name on it, 
with this : ‘ Presented by the Foreside Club and 
Dr. Thomas Pickering.’ Isn’t that something to 
be proud of when we’re such a young club ? ” 

“We’re to vote on it formally at the meeting 
next Tuesday,” said Polly Rawson, who prided 
herself upon being business-like; “and then give 
our money to the doctor.” 

“We were so sorry when Roberta Wing told us 
that our treasurer had gone to Hebron to put the 


142 


TOM PICKERING OF ’ SCUTNEY 


money in the bank,” remarked Dilly. “ You’ll 
only have the trouble of taking it out again — 
and we sha’n’t have a cent of interest ! ” 

Minty forced a wan little smile, but she could 
not speak ; she felt that impulse again to cry out 
the truth. But how could she when they were so 
proud and happy about the money ? “ Isn’t it de- 

lightful ? ” said Dilly enthusiastically. 

“ Delightful ! ” repeated poor Minty huskily, as 
she drove away. As she drove down the hill by 
Dr. Pickering’s, she espied Tom sitting upon a 
terrace, just above the willow hedge, making cal- 
culations with paper and pencil, his forehead drawn 
into the queer V-shaped furrows that made him 
look like a little old man. 

Minty reined in her old horse suddenly, yield- 
ing to an impulse born of righteous indignation 
and despair. She would accuse Tom ; appeal to 
him to restore the money ! She could not bear to 
be called a thief, — for her father’s sake she must 
not bear it. “Tom!” she called; but before he 
could answer, Luella’s light dress appeared be- 
tween the shifting green of the willow foliage. 

“ Have you heard of the new way to invest our 
money, Minty?” called Luella. “I think it will 
be very nice, don’t you ? ” 

There was always a little air of calm dignity 
about Luella which was quite different from the 
effervescence of the other girls ; but her face was 


MINTY'S SORE TRIAL. 


143 


radiant. The Foreside Club had been Luella’ s 
idea from the beginning, and she was very proud 
of it. 

“ Bells ! it’s all very well for girls to spend their 
money for bells,” growled Tom, without raising his 
eyes from his figures ; “ but when you know what 
an awful thing the want of money is — what 
things a fellow has to do for it sometimes ! ” He 
raised his eyes to Minty’s face suddenly, as if com- 
pelled by her steadfast gaze. She felt as if the 
angry accusation in her eyes must annihilate him ; 
but he did not seem to be aware of it : Tom was 
near-sighted. He really needed glasses. 

There was a little tremor in his voice when he 
spoke again, the only sign that Minty could dis- 
cover that he was not as unconscious as he seemed 
of the feeling which she must have for him. 

“ Did you come along the river road ? Did you 
see anything of my bees at old Mrs. Penny- 
packer’s ? ” was what he said. “You needn’t say 
they look just like any other bees, because they 
don’t — they’re handsomer. She was glad enough 
to get them, I can tell you.” 

“ Did you put the money into the bank, Minty ? ” 
asked Luella, pausing in the act of fastening a 
heavily laden blackberry vine against the wall. 

But Minty had started up her horse ; and Luella 
thought the clatter of the wagon had drowned her 
voice, for Minty made no reply. 


144 


TOM PICKERING OF 'SCUTNEY. 


CHAPTER X. 

EMMELINE JEWKES’S QUEST. 

HEN the chapel bell — the old cracked bell 



V V — began to ring out its summons to the 
Friday evening prayer-meeting, Delilah was to be 
seen setting forth leisurely from the top of the 
hill, in her second-best black silk — fifteen years 
old — and her last summer’s bonnet; her Sunday 
radiance of apparel was never dimmed by having 
appeared on any other day. 

Emmeline Jewkes had felt sure that she would 
go ; and yet she drew a long breath of relief that 
was more than physical, as she emerged from a 
cramped hiding-place in the willow hedge. She 
knew that Delilah was not in the habit of missing 
the Friday evening prayer-meeting ; but she said 
to herself that something was likely enough to 
happen to hinder her, just because it mattered so 
much to her to get her out of the way. 

For Emmeline was in feverish haste to discover 
old Dr. Pickering’s prescription, and make a cough 
remedy that should raise her at once from pov- 
erty. Moreover, she said to herself that if she 


EMMELINE JEWKES'S QUEST. 1 45 

didn’t want anything she should be determined to 
get into that attic just to spite that toploftical old 
maid that thought she could keep her out. 

Elias, the hired man, was also absent, as Em- 
meline knew. Elias was not much of a church- 
goer ; but he solaced his mind by sitting in the 
store, where were to be heard such faint echoes 
of the great world as made their way to ’Scutney, 
and an exchange of political opinions curiously apt 
to be hot and strong where the world wags slowly. 
But Emmeline Jewkes’s heart sank as she drew 
near Dr. Pickering’s house ; for Sikesy Brown, the 
“ chore-boy,” was sitting, with the air of a sen- 
tinel, on a high stool in the back porch. In fact, 
Sikesy was a sentinel ; and Delilah had posted him 
upon the stool because when unemployed, a condi- 
tion which Delilah graphically described as being 
short of mischief, it was Sikesy’s infirmity to fall 
asleep. The stool’s legs were long and Sikesy’s 
were short, and the stool had no rounds to afford 
a support ; moreover, the stool’s seat was slippery, 
and when drowsiness overtook him, Sikesy was 
forced to wriggle and squirm to preserve his equi- 
librium. He was approaching the wriggling stage, 
and was only resisting it by the recollection that 
Tom’s bicycle was just inside the woodshed door. 

“I can take care of things just as well riding 
up and down between here and the Doughnut 
Ridge road as I can going to sleep and tumbling 


146 TOM PICKERING OF ’SCUTNEY 

off this stool,” reflected Sikesy, who had a logical 
mind and a not over-sensitive conscience. 

It was just as Sikesy’s logical mind overcame 
his scruples that Emmeline caught sight of him ; 
and she watched with elation while the doughty 
sentinel slipped from his stool, ran to the wood- 
shed, and emerged from it speedily with a bicy- 
cle, upon which he as speedily disappeared up the 
road. 

Now was her time. Emmeline trembled in all 
her gaunt frame when she tried the outer door of 
the woodshed and found it fastened. The only 
thing to do was to go through the kitchen, and be 
prepared with excuses if she should meet any one. 

She made her way softly, softly, and no one 
heard her. She went up the rude and creaking 
stairs that led to the woodshed chamber. She 
thought she was probably invading the hired man’s 
quarters, and feared to be confronted by Elias ; but 
she found herself safely in the long corridor that 
led to the main body of the house. She was un- 
familiar with the house ; and the long summer twi- 
light was beginning to wane, and she had to grope 
her way. She had a candle and matches in her 
pocket, — the Corners mind was not supposed to 
naturally prepare for emergencies, but Emmeline 
was a woman with a purpose, — but she dared not 
light them while she was in danger of encounter- 
ing any one. She decided that behind a door at 


EMMELINE JEWKES'S QUEST. 1 47 

one side of the corridor there must be stairs ; she 
had taken a careful survey of the house from the 
outside, and come to the conclusion that in about 
that place she should find the attic stairs. She 
tried the door — and it was locked ! 

“ Luck and folks and the Lord’s providence are 
always against me!” said Emmeline Jewkes bit- 
terly. Stairs creaked behind the door; there was 
a sound of hurrying feet upon them. 

“ Tom ! Tom ! ” softly called a voice, — a voice 
that thrilled Emmeline’s heart. “ Is it you, Deli- 
lah ? ” The boyish voice was eager, but with a 
shade of doubt and anxiety. Emmeline Jewkes 
leaned against the door, and wiped a cold perspi- 
ration from her forehead. 

“ Unlock the door, quick ! ” she whispered huskily. 
The key turned, and there was a rushing of feet up 
the stairs. As she opened the door she caught 
a glimpse of a white-gowned figure already at the 
top of the stairs. She remembered to lock the 
door behind her before she hurried, breathless and 
trembling, up the stairs. A muffled voice, with a 
boyish chuckle, came from a dim corner of the 
great crowded place in which she found herself. 

“ I was in my nightgown, so I ran. Your cold 
makes your voice sound so queer that I was al- 
most afraid, Delilah. And you said when you 
brought me the strawberries and cream that you 
shouldn’t be up again to-night.” 


148 TOM PICKERING OF 'SCUTNEY. 

Emmeline knocked over the screen, — Tom’s 
improvised clotheshorse screen, — and got upon 
her gaunt knees beside the low bed, and hugged 
her boy to her heart. 

“ What do they mean by locking you up here 
away from your mother, and me starting up in the 
dead of the night thinking maybe you were sick 
or suffering. I’ll show ’em there’s a law in the 
land to protect even folks from the Corners ! ” 

The boy drew himself out of her arms and sat 
upright. He patted her grizzled head tenderly in 
a grave, unboyish way. 

“ I guess you wouldn’t think there was much 
the matter with them if you knew ! ” he said ; and 
a sob tore its way from his throat in spite of an 
evident struggle for manly self-restraint. 

“Archie, you never stole that horse ; ’twas Tom 
Pickering, wa’n’t it ? There ain’t stealing in the 
blood, I know ! ” Emmeline’s voice was agonized 
in its entreaty. 

“We neither of us stole it, Tom nor I,” an- 
swered the boy quickly. “I — I took it that day 
the great show was down at Mill Creek. The 
news had just come that the wild horses had got 
loose in the streets, and I wanted to see them. 
Just as I was longing to get there, and knew I 
couldn’t, I happened to see Monty Griggs’s horse 
tied to a fence ; he could go like chain lightning, 
Monty Griggs’s Captain could ! I untied him, and 


EMMELINE JEWKES'S QUEST. 


149 


jumped onto his back. I didn’t think at all. De- 
lilah says what a fellow ’ll do when he can’t stop 
to think all depends upon what a fellow is, and 
I suppose that’s so ; you know — I had taken 
folks’s horses before. But that time I got paid 
up. I’ve been through — lots.” He held his hand 
up to the light that still came in at the open win- 
dow, — a square, sturdy, roughened boy hand, but 
with the pathetic, almost transparent look that 
some hands acquire in illness. His mother pressed 
it between her two palms, and stroked it tenderly. 

“ I know it was all Tom Pickering’s fault, some- 
how,” she said with dogged resentment. 

“ Tom’s fault ! his fault ! ” cried the boy, with 
a shrill quiver in his voice. * “ Why, if it hadn’t 
been for Tom I should be in jail, or maybe — 
dead ! You see, there was a great crowd in the 
Mill Creek streets that day ; they couldn’t do any- 
thing with those horses. Two of them dashed 
right into a crowd, and in the stampede Captain 
got frightened — any horse would, you know ; I 
couldn’t hold him. I hadn’t any saddle or bridle. 
He dashed down the steep embankment by the 
railroad track into that field where the old brick- 
yard was. He didn’t throw me ; I clung to his 
man.e. When he stumbled he caught his leg in 
an old railroad tie, I think, and fell. I was on 
top of him ; if he had fallen on me I should have 
been killed.” 


150 TOM PICKERING OF 'SCUTNEY 

“ There’s no thanks to Tom Pickering for that ! ” 
said Emmeline in a gratified tone. 

“ But the horse was awfully hurt. I thought 
his leg was broken. I was scared ; I knew he was 
worth a lot of money. I ran away ; ’twas mean, 
but I did. Tom says ’twas mean.’ 

“Tom! Great business Tom Pickering has to 
say anything is mean ! ” burst out Emmeline ; but 
she stopped short, and colored a little under Ar- 
chie’s wondering eyes. 

“I ran away with the show. I was wandering 
’round, not knowing what to do ; and I happened 
to give them a little help about the horses, and 
when I asked one of the men for a job he gave 
it to me. I wrote a note to Tom before I went, 
and sent it by Teddy Norcross. I couldn’t bear 
to think of Captain lying there suffering. I 
thought his leg was broken, and I supposed he 
would have to be killed. I knew Tom would see 
to it, because he likes animals just as I do. Tom 
got the Mill Creek vet, Dr. Phlister, and had the 
horse carried to that old barn on his father’s farm 
down on the river road. Captain’s leg wasn’t 
broken, it was badly hurt ; and Tom has hired Dr. 
Phlister to attend him all this time. It must have 
taken a lot of money. I’m going to pay that to 
Tom some day — soon.” 

In the dim twilight Emmeline saw with a strange 
pang how the boy’s face glowed. 


EMMELINE JEWKES'S QUEST . I 5 I 

“ And what’s he done for me ! ” the sob threat- 
ened to come again, but Archie repressed it man- 
fully. “I — I came back from the show,” he 
resumed steadily. “ When a fellow runs away 
with a show he — well, he gets enough of it 
pretty quick ! I made up my mind that being in 
jail was better than that. But Tom didn’t let me 
get into jail. At first I stayed down in the old 
barn, and he brought me my food ; but I had got 
all run down with hard work and cold in the 
show, and I was threatened with a fever. Then 
Tom got me up here. Nobody knows it — no- 
body but Delilah ; he had to tell her because I 
was so sick. She took care of me just as if she 
was — you ! nights and all ; and when I thought 
I couldn’t eat at all, she made me such nice things 
that I couldn’t help eating ; and put ice on my 
head, and sang, and told me stories ; and — and 
once, when she thought I was asleep, she kissed 
me — just as if she really liked me ! If you feel 
as if you ought to be in jail, and would be if you 
got caught, and don’t dare to go even to your own 
mother for fear of bringing trouble on her — why, 
to think that anybody really likes you — it helps 
you a lot ! And when I came here to sell perch, 
she was always cross, and said she didn’t like to 
trade with folks from the Corners.” 

“ What’s going to be done about the horse ? ” 
asked Emmeline shortly and gruffly. 


152 TOM PICKERING OF ’SCUTNEY. 

“ Oh, that’s the best of all ! Captain is about 
well, and he’s going to be carried to Monty 
Griggs’s Monday. Tom thinks it will be all right; 
Dr. Phlister thinks so too. The horse is in splen- 
did condition, and Dr. Pickering has been good to 
Monty Griggs about a mortgage. Dr. Pickering 
doesn’t know yet, but Tom says he will speak to 
Monty Griggs for me if — if Pm sure never to 
be wild again. And, mother, Dr. Phlister liked 
me, too, when I was in the barn, and he used to 
come there ; and he said he would give me a place 
in his stables, and teach me to be a vet ! ” 

It was evident that to Archie’s mind there 
could be no greater happiness, no higher calling, 
than this. 

“ You could live at home with me, too, couldn’t 
you?” said his mother; and for the first time her 
hard face softened and grew joyful. 

“Yes; and Tom and I shall always be friends — 
he says so. And I’m going to pay him some of 
the money just as soon as I can. I know he has 
had a hard time about it ; he has been worried 
and queer sometimes. It was a good deal for a 
boy, you know, to keep the horse and all ; and he 
couldn’t tell his father — he’s strict about some 
things — until the horse was well. There was a 
time when we were afraid he wouldn’t get well, 
and the doctor would have made us tell Monty 
Griggs ; so you see we had to keep dark. Now it 


EMMELINE JEWKES'S QUEST. I 53 

will be all over Monday, if we can make it right 
with Monty Griggs ; he will believe Tom and his 
father when he wouldn’t believe me.” 

“ Of course Corners folks can’t get anybody to 
believe them ! ” said Emmeline bitterly. 

“ It isn’t just being Corners folks. • When 
you’ve seen life, as I have, you find out that 
there’s a kind that get believed and a kind that 
don’t ! ” 

One could scarcely have smiled, the boy’s wan 
face was so solemn. It is evident that, for those 
who can learn, there is wisdom to be acquired 
even in travelling with shows. 

“ Then if it comes right I can come home Mon- 
day night. Delilah says I’ll be well enough. I’m 
glad home isn’t the Corners ; but I guess a fellow 
could begin over again even there — Tom says so.” 

“ Tom ! ” echoed Emmeline, with sharp con- 
tempt. “It’s always Tom!” she said under her 
breath. She started away hastily, but turned with 
a sudden impulse, and hugged the boy, and drew 
the bed-clothes up over his pathetically misshapen 
shoulders. 

“ A fellow can make something of himself if he 
has got crooked shoulders — Tom says so ! ” he 
said triumphantly. He had been morbidly sensi- 
tive about his deformity ; his mother thought it 
had made him reckless ; he had never spoken of it 
to her before. 


154 TOM PICKERING OF ’ SCUTNEY \ 

“ I ain’t anywhere ; it’ll always be Tom ! ” she 
said to herself as she went down the stairs. She 
went out boldly, not caring who saw her. What 
right had they to hide her boy away from her ? 

In her excitement she quite forgot the errand 
that brought her there. In fact, it was not until 
the next morning that it was recalled to her mind. 
She went down to see Minty Round. She was 
possessed by a feverish restlessness ; she was nurs- 
ing her resentment, and she wished (half uncon- 
sciously) to discover whether Minty Round knew 
about her boy’s return, while they had kept her, 
his mother, in the dark, as if she were not to be 
trusted. 

Tom would be likely to confide in his sister. 
She had heard people say how much that Picker- 
ing boy and girl thought of each other ; and Luella 
was making a great deal of Minty Round, and 
might have told her. 

Teddy Norcross had brought Minty a letter just 
as she was starting on her route, and Minty was 
standing still in the garden path to read it. “ Good 
news,” Emmeline thought ; but the glow on Min- 
ty’s face might have been only the effect of the 
sunlight, for when she put on her hat, which had 
fallen at her feet, and spoke to Emmeline, her 
face looked suddenly pinched and gray. 

“ Foreside don’t appear to agree with you as 
well as the Corners did,” said Emmeline suddenly. 


EMMELINE JEWKES'S QUEST 1 55 

“ I’m kind of — tired,” said Minty, clasping her 
little bony freckled hands tightly around her old 
green, deeply fringed parasol. She always carried 
that parasol, although it was a little inconvenient 
in driving, because it imparted an air of gentility 
to her equipage. “ But something good has hap- 
pened,” she added hastily, looking up with a sud- 
den fear in her eyes. She was always afraid of 
betraying Tom to Emmeline ; she had felt instinc- 
tively, even before Emmeline had told her of her 
suspicions concerning the horse in Dr. Pickering’s 
old barn, that Emmeline would not be sorry to 
know that Tom had taken the money. 

“ It’s a beautiful thing that’s happened,” said 
Minty. “ I showed the formula that father thought 
so much of to the Hebron apothecary, and he 
didn’t seem to think it was worth anything ; but 
now, after thinking it over, he offers to help me 
make it, to go shares for my customers, and per- 
haps to put it on the market. He thinks it is 
almost exactly like the cough medicine that old 
Dr. Pickering made ; but no one can know whether 
it is or not, for the old doctor burned the for- 
mula before he died, and had all the labels on the 
bottles destroyed. He was afraid it would be pa- 
tented, and he didn’t approve of patent medicines.” 

Emmeline leaned upon the gate-post, and drew 
her faded cotton shawl wearily across her fore- 
head. 


156 TOM PICKERING OF 'SCUTNEY. 

“ I’m always fussing and conniving ; I guess 
straightforwardness is best. But it wa’n’t for 
nothing that I climbed those attic stairs ! ” she 
muttered. 

Minty looked at her worn and anxious face. It 
looked to her in the morning light more worn 
and anxious than she had ever seen it ; and for a 
moment she forgot her own trials and difficulties 
— trouble makes hearts tender, unless they are 
very hard. 

“ If — if I can do it, you can help me, Emme- 
line ; it will be work for both of us — they’ll see 
what Corners folks can do ! ” But it was only a 
wan little smile that lighted Minty’s face. 

“ You’re real good, Minty Round.” Emmeline 
spoke with feeling ; she stammered and turned her 
face away. “ After that lobelia and all ! ’Twas 
me — but I never meant to do it. I just hid up 
a little mite of lobelia. I was afraid I couldn’t 
get any when I wanted to — to make some cough 
medicine; and I meant to pay you just as soon as 
it came time to gather it — and somehow I mixed 
it up with the sage and summer savory.” 

Minty told her that it had not mattered much ; 
people were beginning to buy her goods again she 
said, and spoke of old Mrs. Pennypacker and the 
strawberry shortcake, and the kindness of others. 

“ Things do turn out kind of well, if you give 
them time, don’t they?” said Emmeline Jewkes ; 


EMMELINE JEWKES'S QUEST. I 5 7 

and after this curt recognition of providence, she 
suddenly burst into tears, and poured out the story 
of her son’s return. She told only the bare de- 
tails. Archie had borrowed Monty Griggs’s horse 
to go to the show, — poor lamb ! any boy might 
have done it, — and he had lamed it. Tom Pick- 
ering had helped him to care for and cure it. It 
was no more than any boy would do for another, 
was it ? especially when they had been in mischief 
together, as she had no doubt Tom Pickering and 
Archie had. That crinkly old maid had helped to 
take care of Archie when he was sick; she had 
her good streaks, like most folks. 

“It — it seems good of Tom; like what I 
used to think he was,” murmured Minty doubt- 
fully. “ That’s why — it must have cost a good 
deal for the horse-doctor and all ! ” 

“ Dr. Pickering’s son ought to have money 
enough,” said Emmeline, watching her keenly. 

“ He has only a small allowance, the same as 
Luella ; and their father is strict about it.” 

“ Well, he got it ; that’s all I know,” said Em- 
meline. “ He’ll get along all right, Dr. Picker- 
ing’s son!” She turned away abruptly. “You 
think too much of those folks, Minty Round ! I 
expect nothing but what you’d ruin yourself and 
your father for ’em any time ! ” Her face flamed 
as she looked back at Minty. “ As for me, I’m 
going to look out for my own ! ” 


158 TOM PICKERING OF ’SCUTNEY. 

To look out for one’s own ! That did seem 
one’s first duty. Should she ruin herself and 
her father when the choice came next Tues- 
day ? Minty’s brain throbbed with thinking as 
she mounted her wagon and unfurled the green 
parasol. 


MINTY ROUND 'S LOYALTY. 


159 


CHAPTER XI. 

MINTY ROUND’S LOYALTY. 

L UELLA ran out to the road to speak to 
> Minty Tuesday morning, when the latter 
was setting out upon her daily rounds. 

Minty’s problem was still unsolved, although 
she had racked her brains incessantly. She had 
tried a new way of relief, too, — one that they rec- 
ommended at the chapel (Minty had never been 
to church until she came to the Foreside ; folks at 
the Corners didn’t go), — although it didn’t seem 
to her probable that the great unseen God was 
taking any notice of her small affairs. She had 
a vague feeling that he must share the general 
’Scutney opinion that folks at the Corners were 
not worth considering. She shrank from Luella, 
but on this morning Luella was too happy to ob- 
serve it. Her cheeks had an unwonted pink flush ; 
and her eyes shone, though it was through such 
a mist that they seemed likely at any time to 
overflow. 

It was the joy of Archie Jewkes’s safe return to 
his mother, and of Tom’s goodness in the matter 


i6o 


TOM PICKERING OF 'SCUTNEY. 


— especially of Tom’s goodness — that made her 
radiant. She poured the whole story out to Minty 
with an abandon which was something very rare 
in Luella Pickering. 

“You don’t know, Minty, how anxious I’ve 
been about Tom ; you can’t know, because you’re 
not a boy’s sister. And sometimes I have been 
afraid, Minty,” Luella came close to the wagon 
and spoke slowly, “ because there have been 
things that I didn’t understand. Boys are differ- 
ent from girls ; and Tom had to be mysterious 
about this business, hadn’t he, poor fellow ? O 
Minty, you don’t know what it is to me to find 
that he is so kind-hearted and self-sacrificing ! 
Delilah helped, too — but that was just like her, 
dear, cross, soft-hearted old Delilah ! ” 

There were tears in Minty’s eyes now ; and 
Luella, taking them for tears of pure sympathy, 
was moved to further confidences. 

“You see, Minty, it is this way about Tom. 
Just before mother died — I was only five, but 
I remember better than Tom — I heard her say 
to some one, in her weak, slow voice, ‘ She’s a re- 
sponsible little soul ; she will look after the boy ; ’ 
and she put her hand under my chin to raise my 
head so she could look into my eyes, and said sol- 
emnly, ‘You will, won’t you, Luella?’ Mother 
had a brother who was very wild and reckless ; 
that was why she was so anxious about Tom. I 


MINTY ROUND'S LOYALTY. l6l 

think perhaps she wouldn’t have said that if they 
had known then that I wasn’t strong. It has 
worn on me when he would go with the boys at 
the Corners who were so reckless. Isn’t it de- 
lightful that Archie Jewkes wasn’t so bad as peo- 
ple thought, after all ? Do you know, Minty, I 
think Tom has always had a good influence over 
him ! ” 

Minty nodded a faint assent ; she knew how 
blinded Luella was about Tom. 

“ I know you are glad for me, Minty,” Luella 
•went on, a little wistfully ; for although there were 
still traces of tears about her eyes, Minty’s face 
was dull and unresponsive ; “ but you see you 
can’t quite understand what it is to have a brother 
— when there is no mother, and one has such a 
care over him too ! I am stronger than I was, — 
father says so ; but I think to have anything 
happen to Tom, or to know that he had done 
anything really bad, would kill me ! ” 

All through the day’s business, while she re- 
hearsed the price of extract of lemon and war- 
ranted the purity of her vanilla, and assured people 
of the freshness of her chamomile and catnip, 
those words of Luella’s sounded over and over 
again in Minty’s ears ; the whole universe seemed 
to be filled with the dreadful fact that it would 
kill Luella to know that Tom had done anything 
really bad. And that afternoon, at four o’clock, 


1 62 


TOM PICKERING OF 'SCUTNEY. 


she must go to the meeting of the Foreside Club 
and tell her, before them all, that Tom was a 
thief ! — or else that she had lost the money, and 
let them all believe, as they would, — perhaps even 
Luella would, — that she was pretending to have 
lost it because she had spent it or wished to keep 
it ! She would do that if it were not for her 
father’s sake. Had she any right to bring dis- 
grace upon him for the sake of sparing Luella ? 

Now she almost wished that she had told of the 
loss at once ; could she not have told Luella pri- 
vately — have let the truth come upon her gently ? 
And yet it was the club’s money ; all the girls 
must have known. When she turned her horse’s 
head towards home Minty was still struggling 
with bewildering, torturing doubts. 

“ O Luella ! ” it was Viola Hitchings, breathless 
with haste and excitement, whom Luella greeted 
at the door, before three o’clock that Tuesday 
afternoon — before three, and the club meeting 
was not until four. Viola had outrun Roberta 
Wing, who was just as eager, but weighted by a 
more solid corporeal substance. 

“ O Luella! what do you think? that girl hasn’t 
put the money in the bank at all ! ” Viola’s light 
blue eyes were actually dilated under the tow- 
colored bangs that were so long as to suggest a 
Skye terrier, or the man who jumped into the 
bramble-bush. 


MINTY ROUND'S LOYALTY. 1 63 

“ My cousin says so ! ” panted Roberta Wing at 
the foot of the steps. 

“ Perhaps Minty hasn’t had time ; it’s all the 
better if she didn’t put it in,” said Luella stoutly, 
after the one moment in which she had started 
and changed color. 

“ But she said she had ! The morning after we 
voted to have it put in, Polly Rawson and I met 
her, and she told us that was what she was going 
to Hebron for ! ” 

Roberta did not intend to bear false witness. 
Exact statement seems to be beyond the capacity 
of many people intellectually as well as morally. 
If Minty hadn’t said just that — why, what she 
had said amounted (to Roberta’s mind and recol- 
lection) to the same thing. 

“ And when we saw her coming home, — some 
of us club girls, up there by the Doughnut Ridge 
corner, - — and told her of the new plan, she said 
she had put the money in the bank ! ” pursued 
Roberta, her tone becoming more positive as she 
regained her breath. 

“ Or at least she didn’t say she hadn’t, which 
would have been natural,” said Viola Hitchings, 
more conscientiously, — or was it because she was 
touched by the painful doubt, — the painful cer- 
tainty in Luella’s face ? 

“Yes, that would have been natural,” said Lu- 
ella slowly. “I wish we needn’t feel quite sure 


164 TOM PICKERING OF 'SCUTNE Y. 

that there is anything wrong about it just yet. I 
have always been sure that Minty was honest.” 

Yet in her heart Luella knew that she had be- 
lieved there was something wrong as soon as she 
heard the story. The old suspicion of the Cor- 
ners people was always ready to spring up, and 
Minty had been mysterious and strangely reticent 
of late ; her moods had puzzled Luella. She felt 
already overwhelmed by the disgrace and disap- 
pointment that she had been the means of bring- 
ing upon the club by her ill-judged championship 
of this Corners girl. Yet her sense of justice, and 
the affection for Minty that she could not quite 
rid herself of, would not let her be condemned 
unheard. 

“ She’s going to get up a new medicine ! This 
very day she told Jimmy Burden so, and that she 
hoped to bring him some to cure his cough. It 
takes money to get up a medicine ! ” 

Roberta Wing, alas ! could not mourn the down- 
fall of the treasurer of the Foreside Club, who, she 
felt, had usurped a place which rightfully belonged 
to a girl who had a cousin in the bank. 

“ I don’t think she would steal the money,” said 
Viola Hitchings, coming to Minty’s rescue, as she 
caught a glimpse of Luella’s whitening cheeks as 
the latter hastily turned away her head. “ I must 
say I think it’s a mistake socially to make too 
much of a girl from the Corners; but I don’t think 


MINTY ROUND'S LOYALTY. 1 65 

we ought to say dreadful things of her without 
more reason for it. I only thought that she didn’t 
know enough to put the money in the bank ; Cor- 
ners people’s banks — if they have any — are old 
stockings.” 

The girls came dropping in early by ones and 
twos and threes. Almost all had heard that their 
treasurer had failed to follow instructions, and 
deposit the club’s money in the bank. Selina 
Craigie, whose impulsive temperament had been 
one of the prime factors in Minty’s election, was 
evidently somewhat dismayed, but expressed great 
indignation that any girl should hint that there 
could be anything worse than a misunderstanding 
in the matter ; she even went so far as to confide 
to Polly Rawson that she wished she might never 
hear anything more about Roberta Wing’s cousin 
in the bank. Polly had faith in Minty on intellec- 
tual rather than moral grounds ; she didn’t believe 
that a girl who could do things in her head like a 
lightning calculator could be so stupid as to mis- 
appropriate the club’s funds. 

Dilly Pritchard was inclined to be Minty’s friend, 
as always ; but she admitted that she had thought 
that Minty behaved a little oddly that day at the 
Doughnut Ridge corner. The queer old clock in 
the corner pointed to four ; and the rope-skipping 
girl, whose machinery was a little rusty, took four 
jerking skips. 


1 66 TOM PICKERING OF 'SCUTNE Y. 

“ She won’t come ! ” said Roberta Wing. 

A tennis racket was swung across the window 
outside, and Tom’s white-capped head appeared 
above it. “ Who won’t come ? ” he asked in af- 
fected surprise. “ Did any one ever stay away who 
was permitted to come to these feasts of reason 
and flows of soul ? ” 

“ Tom!” Luella stepped hastily to the window, 
and held down the wire screen which he had been 
about to raise. Tom, as has been said, had been a 
privileged visitor, — on the window-seat, — notwith- 
standing the club’s professed exclusion of “ gentle- 
men.” He infused a liveliness into the somewhat 
dull proceedings ; moreover, he was captain of the 
boat-club just now, and the projector of delightful 
water picnics. The Foreside Club felt that it was 
policy to be polite to him. “Tom, this really is a 
private meeting,” said Luella firmly. “There is 
business of — importance to come before it.” 

“ If that’s the case, I should think you would 
want the help of good, cool, clear masculine brains 
like mine,” said Tom; but his tone changed sud- 
denly as he looked at Luella’s face. “ Luella never 
looks like that for nothing,” he said to himself, 
and was turning away in silence when Dilly Prit- 
chard called out impetuously, — 

“ Oh, do let him stay ! We’re all wrought up 
about it ; and he will have a cooler head because 
he hasn’t been thinking and talking about it ! ” 


MINTY ROUND 'S LOYAL TY. 1 67 

In truth, Dilly knew that Tom was good-natured, 
and she thought he would be friendly to Minty. 
Whatever Minty had done, Dilly didn’t want the 
girls to be too hard on her ; she was tender-hearted, 
and didn’t believe in being too hard on people. 

As a door in the back part of the house was 
opened, Emmeline Jewkes’s high-keyea voice 
reached the dining-room. “ She’s so happy she 
can’t keep quiet,” said Tom, a pleased, self-con- 
scious flush upon his face. “ Before she came in 
I saw her walking up and down the road in front 
of the house, talking to herself.” 

The girls had almost all heard of Tom’s kind- 
ness to the boy from the Corners ; those who had 
not now listened to it with flattering interest and 
praises. Luella’s sisterly heart thrilled ; whatever 
Minty Round had done, she could feel a joyful 
pride in Tom. 

“ My father didn’t think I was so very good,” 
said Tom with a slow wag of his head. “ He gave 
me a good going over for not going straight to 
Monty Griggs with the horse ; but a fellow feels 
sneaking to turn informer, and it did seem a pretty 
bad business when we thought the horse would 
have to be killed. There comes Minty Round,” — 
Tom’s tone changed suddenly as he looked down 
the road, — “ and — good gracious ! isn’t Minty 
perfectly stunning to-day ? ” 

Minty wore a bright purple poplin dress. Mrs. 


1 68 TOM PICKERING OF 'SCUTNEY. 

Wicks of Doughnut Ridge had given it to her to 
make a bedquilt ; but Minty had kept it for its 
beautiful color, although it was faded in streaks. 
She had never worn it before : she had been keep- 
ing it for a great occasion, and now one had come ; 
for Minty had resolved that if she could not bring 
herself to betray Tom, she would yet, for her 
father’s sake, hold up her head. She wore a 
frayed black silk shawl that had been her mother’s, 
and again the large white silk gloves — her father’s 
wedding gloves. She walked with dignity, and 
carried over her shoulder her deeply fringed green 
parasol. 

Minty herself cared little for dress, otherwise 
she might have had a better eye for effect ; but 
her quick perceptions — or her mathematical bump 
— enabled her to discern its influence upon others. 
This toilet was intended to assert her dignity, and 
impress the club girls. As she walked into the 
club-room no one would have suspected that the 
streaked poplin covered a faint heart. 

“ Isn’t she brazen ? ” murmured Roberta Wing. 

The business of the meeting was begun in an 
embarrassed way. The president made some busi- 
ness remarks in a desultory manner to “ Miss 
Chairman,” Polly Rawson ; and the chairman 
made some unimportant reports, interspersed by 
facetious comments by Tom, whose gaze Minty 
tried in vain to draw. 


MINTY R O UND 'S LOYAL TY. 1 69 

Then the president, in a voice that shook 
slightly, proposed that they should vote upon the 
question of donating the club’s assets towards the 
purchase of the chapel bell ; and the “ayes” had it 
unanimously. Tom declared that it was especially 
appropriate that a girls’ club should spend its first 
earnings for sounding brass ; but Tom’s levity was 
less marked than usual : he was growing restless 
and embarrassed under Minty Round’s gaze. 

“ Then there is nothing more to do,” began the 
president ; and she smiled towards Minty hope- 
fully, though her lips were blue, “except to ask 
our treasurer to give our money, forty-five dollars 
and sixty-six cents, into the hands of the bell com- 
mittee to-morrow morning.” 

Dead silence for a moment ; then Roberta Wing 
stirred in her chair, and flounced her skirts a little ; 
two or three of the girls exchanged glances. 

Minty arose from her chair, and her green para- 
sol fell to the floor ; in her clinched, nervous hands 
the great white gloves were pulled and torn reck- 
lessly. “ I can’t give ’em the money because I 
hain’t got it — nary cent of it!” She held back 
a great sob, but the vernacular of the Corners 
would have its way. “ I told you I would take 
care of it, anyhow, and so I meant to ; but ’twas 
hid under father’s pillow, and — and somehow it 
got lost ! I’m a-goin’ to pay it back,” — Minty’s 
tone was fierce now, — “ don’t you darst to believe 


170 TOM PICKERING OF ’ SCUTNEY, . 

I won’t pay it back ! I ain’t a thief ! I’ve got a 
new chance, and the Hebron apothecary is a-goin’ 
to help me ! Don’t you, don’t you hender that, 
tellin’ that I’m a thief, will you ? Because then I 
can’t pay it back, and I don’t know what would 
become of father.” The piteous voice ceased sud- 
denly ; it was because of the sob, but the sob did 
not have its way. 

There was a murmur all over the room ; many 
were pitiful, but the disappointment about the 
money was keen, and there was a mystery here 
that seemed like guilt. 

“ If it was stolen, why don’t you try to find the 
thief ? ” Selina Craigie asked impetuously. 

“ I never said ’twas stolen ! ” Minty had seen 
Luella’s hand creep around to her side, — her left 
side, — the little gesture that always frightened 
her. “ It — was gone, and that’s all ! ” 

“ I move that Minty Round be expelled from 
this club ! ” said Roberta Wing firmly. 

There was a confusion of voices, some second- 
ing the motion, others dissenting. 

“I — I say, girls, that’s a shame ! ” This was 
from Tom, whose face, pressed against the window- 
screen, had flushed and paled by turns. 

“ Minty, can’t you tell us all about it ? ” said 
Luella appealingly. 

“ I ain’t a-goin’ to,” said Minty doggedly. “ If 
— if you think what you’re a mind to about 


MINTY RO UND 'S LOYALTY. 1 7 1 

me, even if you spoil my business, I ain’t a-goin’ 
to!” 

It was Luella’s affectionate, appealing tone that 
had strengthened the half-wavering resolve. 

“ The idea of her thinking so much about her 
business! I’m afraid that shows,” said Polly Raw- 
son in an only half-suppressed whisper. 

“ Minty, if you won’t tell us about it, I’m afraid 
you — you’d better resign,” said Luella ; but she 
shrank from the chorus of assent that showed how 
many had been restrained only by regard for her. 

“ I don’t think her resignation is enough,” said 
Roberta Wing severely. “ I think it ought to be 
put on record that the Foreside Club doesn’t fel- 
lowship her.” 

Minty arose, and turned towards the door that 
was nearest to her ; there were blinding tears in 
her eyes, and she fumbled for the knob. The 
sense of loneliness and wrong, the loss of her 
great chance, overwhelmed her. And it was Lu- 
ella who had turned her out ! She didn’t care for 
that other girl, with her talk of putting things on 
record ; but it was Luella ! And she would always 
think her a thief. She turned suddenly, with an 
impulse too strong for her, towards the window, as 
she opened the door. 

“ O Tom ! Tom ! ” she cried, as she rushed out. 

“ La, it wa’n’t him ! ” Emmeline Jewkes’s gaunt 
figure thrust Minty aside. Her voice was harsh 


1 72 TOM PICKERING OF ' SCUTNEY \ 

and strident, and there were spots of brilliant color 
on her high cheek-bones. “ Wouldn’t you think 
she’d have known better than to think Dr. Picker- 
ing’s son would steal ? I just let the play go on, 
laughing at her in my sleeve ! But then, ’twas 
natural enough she should, for there wa’n’t any- 
body there but him and Teddy Norcross and me. 
I just stepped in a minute coming home from 
Hebron. There’s your money, — forty-five dollars 
and sixty-six cents. Nobody stole it ! ” 

Emmeline looked defiantly around the room. 
“ I took it out from under the pillow by accident, 
thinking I’d just take a look at a medical prescrip- 
tion there was there. I sent Teddy Norcross to 
get me a drink, so’s to get a chance to look at 
that prescription. And Minty’s father woke up 
before I could put it back. When I found out 
she thought Tom Pickering took it, why, I just 
waited to see what she would do. I came here to- 
day thinking I wouldn’t let him be called a thief 
that had been so good to my Archie ; and when I 
heard her holler out — I thought you’d die, Minty 
Round, rather than let Luella Pickering’s brother 
be called a thief!” 

“You thought it was he — all the time, Minty 
— and you didn’t tell ! ” said Luella slowly. “ I 
never can forgive myself ! ” 

“ La, what a terrible great fuss you young folks 
make ! ” said Emmeline easily. “ If I had kept 


MINTY ROUND 'S LOYAL TY. 1 73 

the money to start my medicine with, as I had 
most a mind to, why, it would only have been 
borrowing it. I should have paid it back.” 

There was no response ; evidently no one cared 
to discuss Emmeline Jewkes’s moral views. 

“Well, here’s your money, and now I hope 
you’ll be done fussin’. Minty Round, you look as 
if you’d had a fit of sickness. Who’s the one to 
take the money ? ” 

“The treasurer!” cried Selina Craigie. And 
“ The treasurer ! ” shouted a chorus which even 
included Roberta Wing — every voice, in fact, 
but Luella’s. It must be admitted — though not 
lightly would I belittle the business-like character 
of this club — that Luella was crying. 

The chairman thumped, with the great knobbed 
end of Minty’s parasol, for order. 

“ I move,” she said (though it was not at all in 
order for her to make a motion), “ I move that 
Minty Round be formally requested to continue in 
her office as treasurer of this club, and to accept 
the club’s hearty apologies for its unkind treat- 
ment of her!” 

Oh, and then there was cheering! As for Tom, 
he had disappeared around the corner of the 
house. 

“ Girls ! ” he murmured contemptuously, as he 
went ; but he drew his hand furtively across his 
eyes. He certainly had had another experience. 


174 


TOM PICKERING OF 'SCUTNEY. 


Emmeline Jewkes cast a gracious smile around 
the room as she went out. “ I guess you’ve found 
out that folks from the Corners ain’t thieves ! ” 
she said. 

“ O Tom ! what will you ever think of me, and 
of the way I — I looked at you ? ” 

Tom had gone around to the back porch, after 
the club meeting broke up. He had said to him- 
self that in Delilah’s domain scenes were unlikely; 
but Minty Round had found him. 

“ It isn’t every girl who would keep it to her- 
self ; I knew you saw Archie Jewkes that day. I 
thought that was why you looked daggers at me. 
I’ll tell you what I think of you, Minty Round,” 
Tom turned away, and spoke gruffly ; “ I think 
you’re a good deal of a girl ! ” 

Minty turned a radiant face towards Delilah, 
who appeared in the porch. “ People are so good 
to me ! the girls and everybody,” she said. “ And 
now I’ve got such a chance ! ” 

Delilah carried the end of her gingham apron 
towards her eyes, then tossed it back hastily. “ I 
ain’t one of the sloppin’ over kind,” she said ; “but 
there are some folks from the Corners that suit 
me pretty well.” 



Minty turned a Radiant Face toward Delilah. 



THE JECKS FAMILY. 


175 


CHAPTER XII. 

THE JECKS FAMILY. 

OM’S eyes troubled him; Luella “ seemed 



JL sort o’ peaked,” so Delilah declared ; Dr. 
Pickering felt that a change would be good for 
them all. So did Tom and Luella; and that is the 
reason why, the summer following the one that 
witnessed the vindication of the treasurer of the 
Foreside Club, the Pickerings went down from 
’Scutney to Sandy Beach. 

They had been there several weeks before Luella 
Pickering could really make up her mind as to the 
Jeckses. But when Luella did make up her mind 
she was “ apt to be sot,” as Delilah put it. 

And now, it must be said, Luella had reached 
a decision, and had her own opinion of the Jecks 
family. She always took pains to say that she 
knew nothing against Tryphena Jecks ; she might 
be a good enough little thing, but she really ought 
to have brought up the boys better. Luella, as 
we know, had had experience with Tom ; and she 
had a theory that sisters were responsible for their 
brothers’ behavior, especially when there was no 


1 76 TOM PICKERING OF } SCUTNEY. 

mother, as was the case in both the Jecks family 
and her own. See how she had brought up Tom, 
Luella said. And he was fully a head taller than 
she, even if they were twins. 

Luella didn’t really know much about the Jecks 
boys ; but she had heard that they were rough, and 
talked slang, and didn’t always take off their hats 
to a girl. Some people made excuses for them on 
the ground that they had no mother ; and as for 
their father — well, he had been convicted of for- 
gery. He had served a term in prison, and since 
then he had never been able to “hold up his head.” 
He shut himself up, and scarcely spoke to any one. 
They had one servant, but they seemed to have no 
relatives or friends. “ How should the boys have 
any bringing up ? ” some people said. 

When Dr. Pickering took a cottage at Sandy 
Beach for the summer, Luella discovered that 
their nearest neighbors were the Jeckses, who had 
retired to a dilapidated old farmhouse a little way 
back from the beach. Luella, who had once been 
at school with Pheny, confided to her most inti- 
mate friend, Polly Rawson, who was to spend the 
summer vacation with her, that she “ didn’t know 
what they should do about that girl.” 

Luella’s Aunt Esther, who had come to spend 
the summer with the Pickerings, was an invalid ; 
so Luella was virtually the head of the household, 
with Delilah as a vigorous assistant. Dr. Pickering 


THE JECKS FAMILY. 


77 


was at ’Scutney even more than at Sandy Beach, 
and he never interfered with her. Luella liked 
this state of affairs, and felt herself mistress of the 
situation ; but she was a little embarrassed about 
the Jecks family. 

“What do you think Aunt Esther said when 
I told her those people were here ? ” she asked 
Polly Rawson. “She said, ‘ How fortunate ! You 
may be able to be a great help to them.’ Aunt 
Esther has such queer ideas ! I don’t think it 
would be right to expose Tom to the influence of 
those boys.” 

“ Oh, there’s no fear of him ! Now, it seems to 
me, Tom’s lost his spirits since his eyes hurt him. 
He only wants to draw ; and how is a boy with 
weak eyes going to draw ? ” replied Polly with a 
touch of scorn. Polly did like a boy who would 
sometimes take one out rowing, or carry one’s 
basket at a picnic. Tom used to be that way. 
She sometimes thought Luella was too complacent 
about Tom’s “bringing up.” 

“I hope he has different tastes from those 
Jecks boys,” said Luella severely; “but of course 
it would be safer not to bring him into contact 
with them.” And after applying this salve to her 
conscience she went on quite briskly, . “ I really 
think it would be better for us — well, not to hurt 
her feelings, but to sort of turn our backs if we 
meet Pheny Jecks.” 


178 TOM PICKERING OF 'SCUTNEY. 

That certainly had not been Luella’s way with 
Minty Round ; but it was different somehow about 
Pheny Jecks, so her plan was carried out the very 
next morning when they went rowing. Pheny was 
standing quite near the slip, with a fish-net in her 
hand, a very queer figure, in an old pea-jacket that 
must have belonged to one of the boys, with her 
long black hair blowing out from under her red 
cap, and her face tanned like a gypsy’s. 

“She’s quite impossible, isn’t she?” said Luella, 
when they had pushed off out of hearing. 

“She has changed dreadfully. She looks as if 
she never had any good times ; and do you know, 
Luella, I think we hurt her feelings, for I saw her 
lip quiver.” Polly spoke sympathetically, but Polly 
was light-minded; she was learning to row, too, 
and long before they were out of sight of the 
queer figure on the beach she had forgotten all 
about the meeting with Pheny Jecks. 

It was Pheny Jecks who could not forget. Her 
brother Greg came along a few minutes after, and 
found her prone on her face in the sand, behind a 
great rock. 

“ What are you howling about ? ” he demanded, 
somewhat roughly. He was in a hurry to look 
after his lobster-pots, out beyond the weirs. 

“It — it isn’t anything,” said Pheny chokingly. 

“Pheny, you’re not such a goose as to care 
about those girls? A pair of silly snobs!” said 


THE JECKS TAMIL Y. 1 79 

Greg, in a tone of extreme disgust. “No fellow 
would think of minding such a thing ! ” 

Greg, mending his net at a little distance, had 
witnessed the meeting between the new-comers 
and Pheny, and had strongly hoped that Pheny 
wouldn’t care. He had been quite comfortably 
certain that she would be too proud to show it if 
she did care. It was very unusual for her to give 
way to her feelings like this. 

“ I used to go to school with them,” said Pheny, 
bravely forcing back her tears. “It was so dif- 
ferent then, Greg ! I know it was foolish ; but, 
all of a sudden, I couldn’t help it ! ” 

“ Of course it is different ; things have to be 
different in this world. You have to have pluck,” 
said Greg wisely. “ After all, it’s harder for Milt 
than for any of the rest of us. Milt means to 
be somebody.” Perhaps Greg had a shrewd idea 
that the way to make Pheny forget her troubles 
was to set her to thinking of another person’s. 
Pheny was used to thinking of other people’s 
troubles. She felt the responsibility of the boys, 
in spite of Luella Pickering’s opinion. She meant 
to be a mother to them — even to Milt, the eldest, 
who was almost sixteen ; and the boys, when they 
felt very good-natured, called her “ little marmee.” 

“And it’s the hardest of all for — for the poor 
old dad,” continued Greg hesitatingly, and with 
something very like a break in his voice. “A 


i8o 


TOM PICKERING OF 'SCUTNEY. 


fellow comes to realize as he grows older how 
dreadful it must be to have done something that 
spoils everything, and can’t be helped.” 

Pheny’s tearful eyes grew clear and round with' 
astonishment. Who would have expected Greg, 
who was such a harum-scarum fellow, to have 
such thoughts in his head ? 

“When there are such tremendous things in 
the world, the little things ought to look awfully 
small,” said Greg, running away, with the sense 
of having administered a proper tonic. 

But Duff Jecks, who was following in Greg’s 
wake, as he generally did, and had seen and heard 
everything, was of the opinion that Pheny had 
received but cold comfort. “You just leave those 
girls to me ! I’ll take the wind out of their sails ! ” 
he stopped to say, with emphatic nods, before he 
followed Greg to the shore. Duff was a long- 
legged boy, taller than Greg, although he was 
only twelve, and Greg was fourteen. His arms 
and legs would grow out of his jackets and trou- 
sers, even faster than his elbows and knees went 
through them ; and he had a great crop of red 
hair, which, in defiance of brush and comb, stood 
upright above his freckled face. Perhaps it was 
true, as Pheny sometimes dejectedly thought, that 
Duff would never look, under any circumstances, 
as if he were well brought up. His combative 
tendencies had gained him the nickname of Mac- 


THE JECKS FAMILY. l8l 

duff before he was seven, and now it was almost 
forgotten that his real name was Philip. With his 
brother, in some unexplained way, John Henry had 
become Macgregor. Pheny had tried to call them 
by their real names ; but they persisted in think- 
ing she was “ cross ” if she did so, and the effort 
was given up. 

Pheny ran after Duff, alarmed by his threat. 

“ Duff, you mustn’t say anything to those girls ! ” 
she cried, “ nor do anything to annoy them. I will 
never forgive you, Duff, if you do ! ” 

Duff ran on, pretending not to hear. His tem- 
per was not improved by the discovery that Greg 
and Milt had pushed off without him in the Tramp , 
their little catboat, — a patched-up and fishy craft, 
but a treasure. It was useless to call to them to 
come back ; the wind was wavering, and they were 
in haste, and two were a crew for the Tramp , 
especially as she might get a load of lobsters. 
Duff, with much grumbling, baled out his leaky 
old rowboat, which he had bought of a fisherman 
for a song, and set off by himself, with only a fish- 
line for company. 

Meanwhile, the Tramp was making her way, as 
well as a light and dallying breeze would let her, 
out toward the lobster-pots. Milt had fastened 
the sheet, which he was usually so prudent as to 
hold in his hand, and had drawn a book out from 
under the one dingy cushion that the Tramp 


r82 


TOM PICKERING OF } SCUTNEY 


boasted. It was a finely bound book, and Greg 
caught sight of colored plates as Milt opened it. 

“ Where did you get that ? ” he demanded. 

“ That four-eyed fellow left it,” said Milt, with a 
nod toward the pretentious Queen Anne cottage 
of the Pickerings. He scowled as he said it ; and 
the scowl gave him a curious resemblance to Duff, 
although his face was much stronger ; a fine, keen 
face was Milt’s, although marred by a trace of 
sullenness about the mouth. 

“ Is that what he’s up to ? ” said Greg. “ I’ve 
come across him in out-of-the-way corners, among 
the rocks and in the woods, with his nose buried 
in a book, or scratching away with a pencil for 
dear life. He used to think he could draw when 
he was in the grammar school. Then he got 
up a newspaper ; he’s always been up to some- 
thing. You don’t suppose he is trying for that 
prize ? ” 

Milt nodded, without raising his eyes. 

“ It’s something to try for — a three years’ 
course at the Institute, and a year of study abroad 
afterward,” said Greg meditatively, “ if that’s the 
sort of thing that a fellow wants. But he can 
have it any way; his father will send him. Why 
should he bother himself about the prize design?” 

“ It’s an honor,” said Milt briefly, still intent 
upon the book. 

“ That’s it ! he wants to be cock of the walk 


THE JECKS FAMILY. I £>3 

every way ! ” said Greg. “ But, Milt, you couldn’t 
try for the prize ; you’re not sixteen.” 

“ I shall be, three days before the designs are to 
be entered,” said Milt. 

“ He’s really thinking of it ! ” said Greg to him- 
self. “ I don’t see how you can expect to get it 
when you’ve had no training at all,” he went on 
aloud. Greg didn’t mean to be a wet blanket ; he 
was sympathetic, and felt Milt’s troubles keenly, 
just as he did Pheny’s, and thought it would be 
unendurable to have him disappointed. But Milt 
didn’t understand, and was angry. 

“ I wish you would leave me in peace when you 
know I have only a minute or two to look at this 
book ! ” he said. 

“ Why don’t you borrow it ? ” suggested Greg. 

“ Borrow it of him ! I would have burned the 
boat before I would have let it to him, if we hadn’t 
been obliged to have the money. I wouldn’t touch 
this book if ” — 

“ You’re awfully bitter, Milt,” said Greg, gazing 
at him reflectively. 

“ I suppose poverty and disgrace are apt to 
make people so,” said Milt. 

“ Hark ! What’s that ? ” exclaimed Greg. “ It 
sounded like a cry of distress. Some one’s in 
trouble ! ” 

Milt thrust his book under the cushion, while 
Greg brought the Tramp around, and headed her 


184 TOM PICKERING OF 'SCUTNEY. 

in the direction from which the cry came. They 
could dimly descry a rowboat, a motionless dark 
speck between the dazzling sky and the shimmer- 
ing sea ; and it soon became evident that it was 
from thence that the cry for help proceeded. 

“ Some one has got caught on the Thumbscrew ! 
That rock will tear a rowboat to pieces if it gets 
stuck in a certain place. We must hurry ! ” said 
Greg. 

But the wind was in no mind for helping ; they 
were forced to beat, and made very little progress ; 
and they found to their consternation that, con- 
trary to their custom, they had left the oars 
ashore. 

“ Whoever it is will be drowned before we 
get there ! ” said Greg despairingly. “ But see ! 
There’s another boat ! What is that fellow daw- 
dling about like that for ? Say there, hurry ! ” And 
Greg and Milt both made frantic signals to a boy 
in a rowboat which they now noticed for the first 
time, and which was much nearer the rock than 
they were. 

“ If it isn’t Duff ! ” suddenly exclaimed Greg. 
“ What ails the young beggar ? Can’t he see or 
hear? Duff, hurry! There’s a rowboat aground 
on the Thumbscrew ! ” 

“I see it. It’s that girl, and she can stay 
aground for all me ! ” growled Duff, rowing lei- 
surely away. 


THE JECKS FAMILY. 


185 


“ Bring that boat here if you won’t go yourself ! 
What difference does it make who it is ? Don’t 
you know that she may be drowned ? ” cried Milt. 

“ There’s no danger. They’re girls, and so 
they’re hollering,” said Duff, with affected indif- 
ference. “ Girls always do. I’m not going to 
bother myself for Pickerings. Look ! There’s a 
boat putting out to them ! It will get there a 
long time before I could.” There was unmistak- 
able relief in Duff’s tone. 

Greg stood up, shading his eyes with his hand, 
and anxiously scrutinized the boat which had put 
out from the shore to the relief of the shipwrecked 
mariners. 

“ It’s the old scow — and if that isn’t Pheny ! ” 
he exclaimed, after a moment. “ I can see her 
red cap. It’s Pheny going to rescue Luella Pick- 
ering ! ” 


TOM PICKERING OF 'SCUTNEY. 


1 86 


CHAPTER XIII. 

PHENY TO THE RESCUE. 

REG was right ; it was Pheny who had put 



V_X off to rescue Luella Pickering from the 
Thumbscrew. 

“ That old scow is heavy,” Greg went on ; “ and 
she has no one with her but little Jason. It is 
plucky of her, and she’ll get there too ! She’s 
that kind. Sometimes I think that we boys don’t 
realize how much of a girl she is, nor how much 
she has to put up with. She never howls, you 
know — or at least not often,” he amended, with 
a vivid recollection of that morning’s experience. 
“ I wonder if she knows who it is ! ” he added sud- 
denly. “ Of course she’d go just the same ; but 
won’t that girl sing small ! ” 

Milt was struggling to propel the Tramp against 
the wind toward the disabled boat. 

“ It’s too hard for Pheny to row that heavy scow, 
with only that little lubber to help her,” he said. 

“ Jason means well, though he is fat, and sucks 
his thumb,” said Greg charitably. “ Pheny will 
get there ; no fear but Pheny will get there ! ” 


PHENY TO THE RESCUE. 


187 


The two girls in the other boat were breathlessly 
watching the approach of the scow. They were 
in some real danger ; for as the tide fell the boat 
heeled over, and the water began to come in 
through its seams. Suddenly Polly Rawson cried 
that the girl in the scow was Pheny Jecks. 

Polly herself had no anxiety except that the 
scow might reach them before her feet were any 
deeper in the water ; but Luella had not got be- 
yond the point of feeling the bitterness of being 
rescued by Pheny Jecks. 

“ I almost wish that we hadn’t screamed so,” 
she said. “ The tide is going out, and this rock 
will be almost bare ; we might have waded ashore. 
Anyway, some one would have been sure to come 
— some one who wasn’t one of those Jeckses. Of 
course it is good of her,” she added in response 
to Polly’s shocked remonstrance. “ I always said 
that she was a good enough little thing.” 

Pheny pulled bravely, although her arms ached 
so that it seemed as if she must give up. Lit- 
tle Jason, who was the nine-year-old son of the 
Jeckses’ servant, was afflicted with a far worse in- 
firmity than excess of adipose substance, — namely, 
laziness ; and Pheny was driven to doubt whether 
he propelled the weight of his own plump person. 
But Jason felt himself to be a man, and said the 
scow was “ orfle light.” 

Polly Rawson hailed their deliverer from afar. 


1 88 


TOM PICKERING OF 'SCUTNEY. 


“ O Pheny, do hurry ! I always said that you 
were the nicest girl at Miss Crawford’s ; and I 
am not one to forget my friends, whatever some 
people may do. But how we’re to get into that 
boat I don’t see ! ” 

Pheny said nothing at all ; but then she was 
breathless from her exertions, and anxious about 
the transfer of the passengers to her clumsy old 
scow. This was effected at length, and with the 
disabled rowboat in tow the scow was headed for 
the shore. Luella had said nothing ; but when by 
chance her eyes met Pheny’s they suddenly filled 
with tears. Luella took an oar, and found it some 
relief to her feelings to pull with might and main, 
while Jason found his mission in giving orders. 
Polly rehearsed their perils at great length, and 
was voluble in expressing her gratitude. 

“You didn’t say a word, Luella! I think it 
was horrid of you ! ” she exclaimed, as they parted 
from Pheny at the pier. 

“ I couldn’t ! O Polly Rawson ! don’t you see 
that I couldn’t ? ” cried Luella, with a great lump 
in her throat. 

“ I never saw any one hold on to her pride as 
you do,” said Polly. And Luella didn’t explain, as 
she felt inclined to do, that her conscience was 
“ holding on ” to her. There were some things 
which Polly didn’t seem to understand. 

Duff, meanwhile, was much disturbed. He was 


PHENY TO THE RESCUE. 


189 


conscious of having acted a very unmanly part, 
and it was not pleasant to be scorned by Milt. 
He skulked about all day, out of sight of the boys. 
He had to go home at night to help with the 
“ chores ; ” they would make a great fuss if he 
didn’t, he said to himself. But Milt only said, 
with no more than his accustomed brotherly frank- 
ness, — 

“You contemptible little shirk! why didn’t you 
go and help those girls ? ” 

Luella Pickering, too, was not a little troubled 
in mind. She would have to invite Pheny to her 
house now. She could not remain under such 
an obligation. Another thought, too, was leaven- 
ing her pride. Luella had discovered that she had 
been mean and selfish. “ If you really want to 
help her you’ll find a way,” Aunt Esther said ; 
but Luella couldn’t see how. It had soothed her 
feelings a little to present a quarter to Jason, who, 
being hindered by no sensitive pride, had repaired 
to the confectionery shanty farther down the beach, 
and indulged in peanuts and “jaw-breakers ” to an 
extent unprecedented in his experience. To him 
the adventure had been wholly satisfactory ; and he 
resolved, as he munched his “jaw-breakers,” that 
to be a hero and rescue shipwrecked mariners 
should be his regular occupation in life. 

“ Those people ! ” Luella’s father had said, with 
a quick frown, when Polly, at dinner, related their 


190 TOM PICKERING OF 'SCUTNEY. 

morning adventure. “ I should prefer you to have 
nothing to do with them. Jecks rigidly secludes 
himself, and I think he doesn’t wish his children 
to associate with others,” he added. That was a 
strange way to put it, thought Luella. A man 
like that, a forger, didn’t wish his children to as- 
sociate with them ! “ But we owe the girl thanks ; 
some one must go over there,” Dr. Pickering con- 
tinued, with another frown. “Tom would better 
g°-” 

Tom looked very much disinclined to be the 
bearer of the family thanks to Pheny Jecks. “I 
don’t — don’t know what to say to her,” he said. 

He went, however, without any further objec- 
tions. Tom now generally did what was expected 
of him. Luella thought that this great virtue 
was due to his bringing-up. 


THE TREMAINE PRIZE. 


I 9 I 


CHAPTER XIV. 

THE TREMAINE PRIZE. 

HE Tramp had carried a load of lobsters to 



X the canning factory ; and afterward her own 
ers had hoed corn all the long, hot day, until their 
muscles were sore, and Milt’s heart burned hotly 
against his uncongenial lot. As for Greg, he had 
a sturdy philosophy about it : since he had to hoe 
corn, he meant to hoe it so that it should be of 
some account ; and since he had to learn farming, 
he meant to have a great ranch of his own some 
day. And there were the fall days to look for- 
ward to, — long, golden days, full of sea and forest 
scents, and with a frosty tingle to make one’s 
blood bound, in which one could go nutting and 
gunning, and take breezy sails in the Tramp. 
Greg thought it a pity that Milt couldn’t make 
the best of things, as he did. 

Milt had thrown himself on the grass, under 
the gnarled old butternut-tree, with Tom Picker- 
ing’s book on architecture carefully wrapped in 
his handkerchief to keep it from the grass, when 
Tom came along the lane, adjusting his glasses in 


192 TOM PICKERING OF } SCUTNEY. 

the nervous way that had come to him with im- 
paired sight. He had to wear glasses since his 
eyes were weak, and they were quite a cross. 

“ There’s that four eyes again ! What does he 
want?” growled Greg, who was teaching Pheny to 
tie a sailor’s knot. “ He rubs me the wrong way, 
and the sparks begin to fly out of Milt the moment 
he comes around. I suppose he wants to hire the 
Tramp , and complain again that she is fishy.” 

“ He sha’n’t have her ! ” cried Milt hotly, per- 
haps the more hotly that it was bitter to be dis- 
covered in possession of that book. He wished 
that he had sent it back at once, and not yielded 
to the temptation to keep it over night. 

“ I suppose you have come for your book,” he 
said, rising and extending it toward Tom with a 
heavy scowl. “I — I meant to return it yester- 
day, but ” — 

“ I never expected to see it again ! I was going 
to send for another copy ! ” exclaimed Tom. He 
scowled responsively, as he took the book ; it was 
only the result of near-sightedness, but Milt didn’t 
know that. 

“ We’re not thieves,” said Milt resentfully. 

“ Oh, I — I didn’t know where I left it, you 
know,” explained Tom, looking a little alarmed at 
Milt’s fierceness. “I didn’t know that — that you 
cared for such things,” he added. “ If you care 
to look at it further, you are welcome to.” 


THE TREMAINE PRIZE. 


193 


“ Thank you, I don’t,” said Milt curtly ; so 
curtly that Greg snickered involuntarily, and Tom 
colored. 

He was turning away, when he suddenly remem- 
bered his errand. It was ridiculous to care for 
the rudeness of these ignorant fellows, he said to 
himself ; and he was ashamed that it had made 
him forget for a moment what he had come for. 

"I came over to — to express my father’s thanks 
and my own to your sister,” he said stiffly. “She 
was very kind and very brave to rescue my sister 
this morning.” 

Pheny displayed a blushing, radiant face from 
behind the lilac-bush, to whose shelter she had 
retreated. 

“ It was so nice that I got there before they 
were very wet ! ” she said delightedly, while Greg 
growled, “ Keep still ! ” under his breath, and 
Milt’s scowl became direfully black. Pheny never 
did have any proper pride. “ I wish the scow had 
been nicer,” continued Pheny. “ And little Jason 
wasn’t so very clean. It is very hard for Arabella 
to keep him so — such a fat little boy, who is up 
to everything.” 

Tom found a friendly face so agreeable among 
these scowling Jeckses that this apology of Pheny’s 
didn’t strike him as being “ idiotic,” as Milt and 
Greg afterward cordially agreed that it was. 

“ I am sure it was very kind and brave of 


194 TOM PICKERING OF 'SCUTNEY. 

you,” repeated Tom stammeringly. He under- 
stood even less how to get on with the girl than 
with these rough Jecks boys, and always gave her 
as wide a berth as possible. But now he had a 
strong impression that she was an uncommonly 
nice girl, and resolved to make Luella “do the 
square thing by her.” He would have liked to 
give further expression to his approval of Pheny, 
but this was quite beyond him. He got himself 
away, shamefacedly, with one more little murmur 
of gratitude, to which Pheny dared not reply, the 
boys’ looks were so dreadful. 

He had gone but a few rods when he turned 
back, with a piece of paper in his hand. 

“ I don’t know how this design came to be in 
the book,” he said. “ I didn’t leave it there.” 

Milt stepped forward, and snatched it almost 
roughly from his hand. “ Give it to me ! It’s 
mine,” he said. 

“You — you drew 'it ? ” asked Tom, in evident 
astonishment. “ I didn’t know that any one about 
here could draw like that.” 

Gratification showed in the flush which rose to 
Milt’s forehead, although he tried very hard to 
conceal it. 

“ I have never been taught,” he said, in a mol- 
lified tone. “ I’ve picked up a few ideas here and 
there, that’s all.” 

“ I think you have managed to pick up some 


THE TREMAINE PRIZE. 


195 


pretty valuable ones ! ” said Tom Pickering heart- 
ily. And then an idea struck him that caused his 
face to darken suddenly. Was it possible that 
this fellow could mean to try for the great prize 
which old Captain Lucas Tremaine, the richest 
man in the town of Hebron, had offered ? It was 
a prize that meant not only the course of study at 
the Institute and the year of study abroad, but 
distinction, success ! 

Now it happened that the doctor’s son had 
made up his mind to win that prize himself. 


196 TOM PICKERING OF 'SCUTNEY. 


CHAPTER XV. 
milt’s ambition. 

OM PICKERING had always been ambitious. 



X From the day when he had started the ’ Scut- 
ney Mail with Macurdy Green, he had imbibed 
some of Macurdy’s determination. To win what 
others tried for and failed to get, — that was the 
aim which he was now keeping more and more 
before him. Indeed, it was this, rather than Lu- 
ella’s influence, which, since the escapade with 
Monty Griggs’s horse, had kept him out of what 
is commonly called “mischief.” His father no- 
ticed and was proud of Tom’s ambition ; and so 
was Luella, as unconscious as Tom himself of its 
ignoble quality. 

“ Of course one must have training in order to 
do anything that is of any consequence,” he has- 
tened to say to Milt, watching the other’s expres- 
sion narrowly. But it was impossible to discover 
in Milt’s face whether he meant to try for the 
Tremaine prize. 

“If — if I could help you,” said Tom. “I’ve 
been studying it quite a while, you see.” * 


MILT'S AMBITION. 


197 


Tom was but dimly conscious of the mixed 
motives which prompted this speech of his. “ I 
should really like to help him along a little if he 
isn’t trying for the prize — and I could find out 
what he was up to.” This was the thought which 
lay in the background. Tom was kind-hearted, 
and liked to help people — if only they were not 
trying to wrest even the smallest share of his 
coveted glory from him. 

“ I don’t ask any help,” said Milt ungraciously. 
He said to himself that the easy superiority of this 
smooth fellow was more than he could endure. 

Tom washed his hands of the Jecks family as 
he turned away : he even doubted whether, after 
all, it would be of any use for Luella to try to 
help that nice little girl ; her brothers would al- 
ways stand in her way. But that fellow could 
draw! The design was original, and yet on con- 
ventional lines ; the style was much more suit- 
able for a library building than the one he had 
begun. Why hadn’t he thought of it ? Probably 
the fellow was only trying for practice — just to 
see what he could do. If the committee had 
called for sketches in the rough, his might be 
among those chosen ; but he would never be able 
to develop, to elaborate, it ; that was where train- 
ing came in ! 

“ But I wish I had thought of that style,” Tom 
said to himself. “ Or, rather, had thought of com- 


198 TOM PICKERING OF ’ SCUTNEY \ 

bining those two styles as he has done.” He sat 
down on a rock, and drew some hasty outlines on 
a fly-leaf of his book. “ I don’t want to forget it,” 
he said to himself. “ He’ll probably throw it away. 
Of what use could it be to an ignorant fellow like 
him ? How stupid of me to tell him that it was 
good for anything ! He would never have known 
it.” 

But Milt had not thrown his sketch away ; he 
was brooding over it, with knitted brows, under 
the old butternut-tree. He rubbed out a line 
here, and added a touch there. His heart swelled 
suddenly with hope and pride as he rose to his 
feet. He saw a wide vista opening before him 
out of the heavy shadow of poverty and disgrace. 
He would take them all with him : the boys should 
have their chance ; so should “ little marmee,” 
whose woes and deprivations made him sick and 
sore when no one knew that he cared ; the poor 
old dad, as Greg called him, whom Milt, with a 
sturdy faith which would not give way, had never 
believed guilty — he should hold his head up once 
more honorably among men! This was Milt’s 
ambition. 

“ It is good ! He saw it ! It’s my opportunity ! 
Some way I’ll learn how to finish it ! ” said Milt, 
through his set teeth. 

Tom arose from his bed at midnight. He had 
often said to Luella that “ when an idea got to 


MILT'S AMBITION. 


I 99 


running in his head he could not sleep.” He 
went up to his studio, a little room under the roof, 
tore that fly-leaf out of his book, and sat down 
with it at his desk. “ I only saw it, any way,” he 
said to himself. “No one could say that I was 
taking anything that belonged to him. Very 
likely I should have thought of the same thing in 
time. Anyway, it couldn’t possibly be of any use 
to a fellow like him, because he wouldn’t know 
what to do with it. If I should win the prize, 
I’ll — I’ll do something for him.” 


200 


TOM PICKERING OF } SCUTNEY. 


CHAPTER XVI. 


ARABELLA S VICTORY. 



FEW days later Pheny Jecks received a 


dainty note from Miss Luella Pickering, in- 
viting her to a lawn party. She was radiant with 
delight ; although Milt scowled at it darkly, and 
Greg said that he did hope they all had too much 
pride to be patronized by those Pickerings. Duff 
was her only ally, an unexpected one, for Duff had 
been most bitter toward the “snobbish Pickerings.” 

“ I’ll tell you what, boys, Pheny is going to 
have trouble enough to get the dad to let her go. 
We all ought to pitch in and help instead of hin- 
dering her,” he said seriously. “ It would be a 
pity if she couldn’t have one good time ! ” 

Pheny had put her head in at the kitchen win- 
dow. (They were all in the garden when the note 
came.) 

“Arabella, I know there are no more tucks to 
be taken out of my old spotted muslin, but don't 
you think the hem might be let down so that I 
could wear it to Luella Pickering’s lawn party ? ” 
she said wistfully. 


ARABELLA'S VICTORY. 


201 


“ Well, I should think I had my hands about 
full enough without fixin’ folks up to go to 
parties ! ” replied Arabella tartly, scrubbing little 
Jason's nose the wrong way. She had little cork- 
screw ringlets, which danced as if they were on 
wires when she shook her head. One could al- 
ways judge just about how cross Arabella was by 
the way in which her ringlets danced. “I’m all 
wore to skin and bone without takin’ no hems 
out,” she added. 

But Pheny did not look discouraged as she 
turned away her head. “ She will ! ” she whispered 
softly, and Duff nodded sagely in reply. It was 
generally admitted that, in the boys’ parlance, 
Arabella’s “ bark was worse than her bite.” 

“ Will you come with me, Duff, to the dad ? ” 
asked Pheny. 

Duff shook his head, after a moment of delib- 
eration. “ He’s got a lot of bean-poles laid up 
against me. You’ll do better without me.” 

Pheny took her way down into the south field, 
where her father was hoeing corn, her heart beat- 
ing quickly with hope and fear. The boys watched 
her wonderingly ; it was queer that Pheny could 
care so much for a party ! But Greg finally agreed 
with Duff that she was “ only a girl, after all, and 
girls had to be a little foolish now and then.” 

A tall man, with bowed shoulders and a pre- 
maturely whitened head, looked up at her ap- 


202 


TOM PICKERING OF ’ SCUTNEY. 


proach, with a lightening of his heavy countenance. 
The color sprang into his face and his eyes flashed 
as he read the note she gave him. 

“ Pickering ! He might have let me alone,” he 
murmured. “ Wasn’t there any place but this 
that would do for him ? — and now to persecute 
my poor children ! ” 

“ But it — it isn’t exactly persecuting people, 
dear old dad, to ask them to parties,” suggested 
Pheny a little timidly, for it was long since she 
had seen her father so moved. “ And oh, I want 
so much to go ! ” 

“ You want to go !.” echoed her father, as if in 
amazement. “You want to have heart-burnings 
and jealousies, to be misunderstood, and crowded 
to the wall, and trampled upon ? Ah, well ! It’s 
always the way! You will learn only by experi- 
ence.” 

“ Oh, dear me, dad! I only want to go to Luella 
Pickering’s party. A girls’ party ! It can’t be so 
dreadful as you say. I’ve been to them, and they 
were not,” said Pheny stoutly. 

“ Perhaps I may be a little absurd, Pheny ; but 
I can’t let you go — not to the Pickerings’, at any 
rate. Don’t let me hear any more of it.” 

Pheny turned away, and the green fields and the 
blue sea swam mistily before her eyes. The first 
pang of disappointment was keen. Her habit of 
thinking for others came to her relief. How 


ARABELLA'S VICTORY. 


203 


embittered, how miserable, her father was ! She 
wished that she had not added to his troubles by- 
asking to go to the party. There seemed to be 
some reason why it would be worse to go to Lu- 
ella Pickering’s party than to any other. 

After all, Pheny went. It was Arabella who 
came to the rescue. Arabella was a born Yankee, 
who never waived the privilege of freeing her 
mind. 

“ If that young one ain’t never goin’ to have a 
chance to go amongst folks an’ be like other girls, 
I for one ain’t a-goin’ to stay here an’ see it ! ” 
she proclaimed, forcing her way into the little den 
to which Mr. Jecks retreated when his hard and 
uncongenial labor was over. “’Tain’t accordin’ 
neither to natur’ nor grace to forsake the assem- 
blin’ of yourselves together; an’ the hem took 
down in her old dotted muslin makes it jest a fit, 
an’ I’ve got some cherry-colored bonnet ribbons 
that’s providential for a sash, if ever anything 
was ; an’ if it ain’t my place to speak, see her 
heart broke I can’t an’ won’t ! ” 

Mr. Jecks would have liked to wave her imper- 
atively out of the room, but Arabella was fully 
capable of carrying out her threat. It would be 
impossible to fill her place in the present state of 
the family finances; all the household burdens 
would fall upon Pheny’s shoulders. And so Ara- 
bella’s eloquence flowed unchecked ; and what “ the 


204 


TOM PICKERING OF y SCUTNEY. 


dear old dad ” had denied to Pheny, although her 
wistful looks tugged at his heart-strings, he yielded 
to Arabella. 

He opened the door, and called after her sternly, 
“ Remember, this is only for once ! I won’t have 
it again.” 

“ I hain’t no opinion of such foolishness as goin’ 
to parties,” Arabella declared that night to Pheny, 
who was curled up on the broad window-seat of 
the living-room, watching for the boys through 
a dreary fog. “ But all the same, if your father 
says you’re to go, that hem’s got to be took 
down.” 

“ He won’t let me go, Arabella ; it’s no matter 
about the hem,” said Pheny mournfully. 

“ ’Tain’t an hour ago that he told me, in his 
own settin’-room, that you was to go. I ain’t deaf 
as I know of,” said Arabella tartly. 

Pheny had sprung to her feet and uttered a 
joyful cry, but her face fell the next moment. 
“ He doesn’t want me to go to the Pickerings’, I 
know, Arabella ! ” 

“ He don’t want no more talk about it, that I 
know,” said Arabella quickly. “ Sakes alive ! it 
ain’t a-goin’ to break no bones for a girl to go to 
a party, if she hain’t got no more sense than to 
want to ! And that hem kind of come down 
itself, the thread was so old an’ rotten ; an’ bein’ 
I had a hot iron, I jest give it a little might of 


ARABELLA 'S VICTORY. 


205 


pressin’ whilst you was out weedin’.” Arabella 
produced a muslin gown, old, but white and dainty 
by reason of careful laundering, and tastefully be- 
decked with the “providential” cherry ribbons. 

Pheny clasped her hands, and drew a long, long 
breath of admiration. “ It’s beautiful ! And, O 
Arabella, you are such a dear ! ” she exclaimed. 

“ There, don’t be a-palaverin’ me ! I guess I 
know if I’ve got young ones to look out for, I’ve 
got to be a-slavin’. Here you, Jason, let them 
flapjacks alone, an’ don’t go to daubin’ your clo’es 
with maple surrup ! ” And Arabella pursued Ja- 
son. Pheny knew that it was rather to hide the 
soft looks which belied her words than for any 
other reason. 

An invitation had come for Milt, brought by the 
Pickerings’ little many-buttoned page, who was the 
admiration of all Sandy Beach. It was evidently 
an afterthought ; in fact, it was Tom’s suggestion, 
which he had been at some pains to make Luella 
adopt. 

Milt’s face was like a thundercloud when the 
invitation was put into his hand, and he forthwith 
dropped it into the heart of the kitchen fire. Ara- 
bella said it “ seemed real wasteful to burn up so 
much hifalutin’ and perfumery.” 

“Wouldn’t it be a nice world if people would 
all like each other ? ” Pheny remarked to Arabella 
when the boys had left the room. 


20 6 


TOM PICKERING OF ’ SCUTNEY 


“Them that’s top of the heap an’ them that’s 
clear under ain’t a-goin’ to,” said Arabella philo- 
sophically. “Them Pickerings has took airs, an’ 
there’s something back of it all, if I don’t miss 
my guess. It’ll all come out one of these days ; 
you see if it don’t.” 


LUELLA PICKERING 'S GARDEN PARTY. 20J 


CHAPTER XVII. 

luella Pickering’s garden party. 

D UFF was stirring betimes on the day of the 
lawn party. In the first place, he took a 
walk down the beach to the little booth beyond 
the hotel, where were sold curiosities and orna- 
ments, from lucky bones and sharks’ teeth to tiny 
watches and strings of coral. Duff had been “ sav- 
ing up” for the Fourth of July, — they celebrated 
so stingily at Sandy Beach, that a boy needed all 
the more to show his patriotism by making a noise, 
— but he wasn’t going to have Pheny go shabbily 
dressed to that lawn party. 

There was a necklace, with bracelets to match, 
made of tiny pearly shells and red glass beads, 
which Duff admired very much. Seventy-five 
cents ! That was a great deal of money. Duff 
felt a keen pang as he saw fire-crackers and tor- 
pedoes vanish out of his reach ; but for Pheny to 
be smart, to be able to hold up her head among 
the others, it was not too much to give. 

Pheny was a little dismayed when he produced 
his present, which was not until her pretty white 


208 


TOM PICKERING OF 'SCUTNEY. 


dress was donned, and she was ready for the party. 
The beads were very vulgar and ugly, taste not 
being Duff’s strong point. But should she hurt 
Duff’s feelings — Duff, whose homely face was 
radiant with joy and pride ? Better that every one 
should sneer at her, better that she should dis- 
grace Luella Pickering’s party, was the feeling of 
Pheny’s loyal heart. 

“ They’re real becomin’,” said Arabella, with 
unwonted affability ; and Pheny went gayly off to 
the party, having “as nice fixings as any of them,” 
as Duff told her. 

“ Oh, horrors ! Luella, look at those red glass 
things ! ” whispered Polly Rawson at the first op- 
portunity. " How common they make her look ! ” 

For a moment Luella almost wished that she 
had not invited Pheny Jecks. What would the 
girls think ? Pheny was not unaware of the mean- 
ing of many curious looks, and her cheeks were 
as red as the beads ; but she held her head high, 
as Duff had advised : she was not going to be 
ashamed of Duff’s present. And there were sev- 
eral girls whom she used to know, well-bred girls, 
who greeted her as if nothing had happened, and 
didn’t look at the beads ; and it was all so delight- 
ful, the green, velvety lawn, with the tennis-balls 
flying, and the music making one’s toes tingle, that 
she soon forgot her mortification. Pheny could 
have a good time without thinking of herself, and 


LUELLA PICKERING'S GARDEN PARTY. 209 

her gayety and good-nature drew plenty of friends 
to her side. 

“ See how much every one is making of her — 
even the Peyton girls, who are so particular ! ” 
said Luella. “ And I heard their mother inquir- 
ing for her father, and saying he was one of her 
oldest friends. I think it would have been a mis- 
take not to invite her, whatever papa may say ; for 
people are sure to discover that they are here. 
And look at Tom! I didn’t suppose I could coax 
him to be civil to any girl — and he hasn’t been to 
any of the others ; but he has been dancing with 
Pheny Jecks, and now he is carrying her an ice ! ” 

This was after the Chinese lanterns were lighted, 
and the great lawn, with its flower-decked trees, 
was a fairy bower. Pheny had been feeling en- 
chanted for a long time, and actually pinched her- 
self to be sure that she was Pheny Jecks. What 
could her father have meant by his bitter warn- 
ing? Every one had been most kind — even Tom, 
whom her brothers had held in such scorn, and 
who certainly had a supercilious way of staring at 
one through his glasses. They had misjudged him 
very much ; he was not snobbish at all, but had 
shown a great interest in the Jecks boys, espe- 
cially Milt, inquiring all about his pursuits. Pheny 
was even guilty of the disloyalty of wishing that 
her boys had as fine manners as Tom. She chat- 
tered away to him almost as freely as to one of 


210 


TOM PICKERING OF f SCUTNEY. 


her brothers. Pheny was a little simpleton about 
some things; the boys were quite right about 
that. 

Tom resumed the subject of Milt’s pursuits, 
as soon as he returned with the ice. They were 
a little withdrawn from the gay crowd, and the 
music came softly from far away. Pheny remem- 
bered afterward, with a keen pang, just how it 
sounded — a little ripple of “Sweet Home” com- 
ing and going upon the breeze between their talk. 

“And Milt is determined to be something dif- 
ferent from a farmer or a fisherman in spite of his 
father ? ” Tom said interrogatively. 

“ Such a life as that wouldn’t do for Milt, you 
know,” said Pheny earnestly. It was a comfort 
to talk about the boys to some one who under- 
stood, and seemed really interested. “ He is so 
ambitious ! He works and works at that drawing. 
Sometimes he draws all night, after he has been 
working hard all day. I get up in the night, and 
look for a light in the old tool-house, and it makes 
me feel badly when I see it ; I know he is so tired. 
He works there because papa never goes there, 
and it is out of sight of his window. Papa put his 
old desk out there to get it out of the way, and 
Milt uses that. It — it’s a secret, you know ” — 
Pheny looked up in sudden dismay “But of 
course you wouldn’t tell papa.” 

“ I certainly wouldn’t,” said Tom lightly, « even 


LUELLA PICKERING'S GARDEN PARTY. 21 I 


if your father would do me the honor to speak to 
me, which I very much doubt.” 

“ Papa doesn’t speak to any one if he can help 
it,” said Pheny, and returned to her ice with a sigh 
of relief. Of course it didn’t matter who knew 
that the old tool-house was Milt’s studio, so long 
as his father did not. 

“Tom, what did you mean by paying so much 
attention to Pheny Jecks ? ” asked Luella, stopping 
him on his way up-stairs that night. 

Tom reddened angrily. 

“You wanted me to dance; and if I’ve got to 
caper like a monkey, I shall choose my partner,” 
he said. “ Does a fellow always mean something 
by what he does ? ” 

“ I didn’t mean to find out where that design 
was,” he said to himself reflectively, as he closed 
the door of his room. “ No one could say that I 
meant to ; but I found out, nevertheless ! ” 


212 


TOM PICKERING OF 'SCUTNEY. 


CHAPTER XVIII. 

THE DESK .IN THE TOOL-HOUSE. 

I T was on a cloudy morning, nearly a week after 
the lawn party, that Milt took a party from 
the hotel out fishing in the Tramp. It was the 
Tramp's business to earn an honest penny in any 
way that she could. Milt worked early and late, 
and missed no opportunities, hoping always to save 
enough to pay for a course of * drawing-lessons. 
But it was not always that there was a penny to be 
spared from the bare necessities of living in the 
tumble-down old farmhouse, and the drawing-les- 
sons were still in the dim distance. 

But in the meantime there was an artist at the 
hotel who had given him a little help and some 
useful hints, and there were books on architectural 
drawing in the Hebron library which he walked 
five miles to get. Obstacles, in Milt’s opinion, 
were made to be overcome ; and he was more and 
more convinced that he had a good idea in that 
design. 

From his studio under the roof Tom had watched 
the Trampy through a glass, as she set out from 


THE DESK IN THE TOOL-HOUSE. 21 3 

the pier. “ It’s an all-day fishing-trip, that’s what 
all those luncheon-baskets mean,” he said to him- 
self. “And I got Luella to ask Pheny Jecks to 
her picnic — a 1 small and select ; ’ she needn’t 
have been provoked with me for backing out, for I 
never really promised to go. And those boys 
have gone down to the marsh to help make hay. 
At last the coast is clear. A fellow feels cheap, 
manoeuvring and watching so, but all I want is to 
see what that fellow is doing with that drawing. 
It couldn’t hurt him, even if he could do anything 
with the design, which he can’t. He’s made no 
end of blunders by this time, of course. And I 
want to know exactly how he was going to manage 
those bases.” 

Tom went stealthily along behind the garden 
wall, and kept in the shadow of the trees as he 
crossed the field. “ A fellow who isn’t used to 
skulking doesn’t like this ! ” he said to himself ; 
“ but it isn’t as if I were going to do any harm.” 

With his hand on the door of the old tool-house 
he drew back, although the latch yielded, and no 
one was in sight. Tom had never done dishonor- 
able deeds ; the question now was whether he had 
been preparing to do them, or to resist the temp- 
tation. 

He could see the light in that window from his 
room, a faint spark burning steadily until late into 
the night, as Milt worked. He had arisen in the 


214 


TOM PICKERING OF ’ SCUTNEY . 


night to look at it, as Pheny did. His feverish 
eagerness to see how the drawing had progressed 
was uncontrollable. 

At least, Tom did not control it. He raised the 
latch softly, and went in. It was a dusty, cob- 
webby place, filled with old lumber. There was 
the desk in a corner, only a little less dusty than 
the other old furniture. Milt was careful to keep 
it so, that his father, if he should by any chance 
go there, need not suspect. Tom shut the door 
behind him, and slipped the bolt. The desk was 
locked, but he was prepared for that. He had 
with him a bunch of keys which fitted a variety of 
desks and drawers in his father’s library. The 
locks of desks like that were ordinarily of the sim- 
plest construction ; and if one of the keys would 
not unlock it, he thought a bit of wire would. 

The third key that he tried was successful, 
much to his relief ; for he had a vague feeling that 
to pick a lock was more disreputable than to open 
it with a key. The desk seemed to be full of old 
letters and papers. Tom felt a chill of disappoint- 
ment ; what more likely than that Milt took the 
design with him to his room to hide it more 
securely ? But he searched among the papers, and 
came at length upon a rough portfolio of home 
manufacture. Here it was, among several others, 
all evidently intended for the same purpose, but 
none nearly so good — not one ; probably Milt 


THE DESK IN THE TOOL-HOUSE. 21 5 

didn’t know enough to be aware of that himself. 
But yet he was working upon it evidently, and had 
discarded the others. 

“How well the fellow is doing — how wonder- 
fully well!” he said. “A little heavy and bungling 
his touch is, here and there ; but how he carries 
out his idea ! There I made a mistake. I ought 
to have carried out my coping as he has done ; it 
was a little out of drawing there, but he is remedy- 
ing that. He’s a genius ! And how he works ! 
Heavens, if he should win ! That’s what the com- 
mittee is after — real talent !” 

Tom took the sketch to the window, to examine 
it more closely. 

“ It’s in my hands — no one would suspect me ! 
But pshaw ! What am I thinking of ? He would 
have time to draw another. And I’m not so bad 
as that — yet ! ” 

“You jes’ leave that be ! It’s Milt’s ! ” 

The words were spoken in a shrill voice that 
came from somewhere close at hand, and Tom 
grew hot and cold in actual terror. 


21 6 TOM PICKERING OF ’SCUTNEY 


CHAPTER XIX. 

LITTLE JASON’S SECRET. 

HEAP of shavings under the carpenter’s 



±~\. bench in the old tool-house gave forth a 
rustling sound, and from it emerged the rotund 
person of little Jason. He was clinging tightly to 
a small pan of doughnuts, and his face was be- 
smeared with the same dainty. It was evident 
that he had surreptitiously possessed himself of the 
fruits of his mother’s cooking, and sought a safe 
retreat in which to enjoy them. 

It was a relief to Tom, in the first moment, to 
see anything so purely terrestrial as little Jason ; 
but in the next he realized that scarcely anything 
could be more disastrous than this small spy. “ I 
— I’m not hurting Milt’s drawing, you know,” 
he stammered, quailing before the round-eyed de- 
tective in a calico apron, as before a stern judge. 
“ I draw, too, and I wanted to see how he was get- 
ting on ; that’s all.” 

Though he was fat and addicted to doughnuts, 
little Jason was too shrewd not to see the lame- 
ness of this excuse. “ Folks that opens other 


LITTLE JASON'S SECRET 21J 

folks’ desks gets took up,” he remarked senten- 
tiously; and Tom became aware that another line 
of defence was necessary. 

“ Perhaps Milt might be annoyed, though. As 
you can see for yourself, I am putting it into the 
drawer again, just as it was, and so ” — 

“ What a whole slew of keys ! Do you keep 
’em a purpose to unlock folks’ drawers ? Be you 
a burglar ? ” little Jason’s mouth remained wide 
open now, as well as his eyes. 

“ Don’t you know who I am ? ” asked Tom with 
sudden hope. 

“ O’ course I know ; you’re the feller that lives 
over there,” with a jerk of his head toward the 
Pickering cottage ; and Tom’s hopes were dashed. 
“You’re Tom Pickering. But I didn’t know you 
was a burglar ; is that why the boys don’t think 
much of you ? ” 

“ Listen to me,” said Tom, with desperate calm- 
ness. “ I’m not a burglar ; you must know that 
a boy like me is never a burglar. I’m — I’m a 
friend of Milt’s.” 

“Does — does Milt know it?” said little Jason, 
with an accent of doubt. 

“And of his sister’s ; you can ask her. But no — 
on the whole, you would better say nothing about 
me. As I said, Milt might be annoyed, because 
he doesn’t like to have his friends look at his 
drawings, so I’m willing to pay you to keep quiet 


218 


TOM PICKERING OF 'SCUTNEY. 


about seeing me here,” said Tom. “ I shouldn’t 
think you would wish to say much about being 
here yourself,” he added, with a stern glance at 
the doughnuts. “ What will your mother say ? ” 

“ They’ll be ate before she knows it, anyhow,” 
answered little Jason triumphantly. 

“ But she’ll punish you,” said Tom solemnly. 
The grin which immediately overspread little 
Jason’s face proved a hopeless laxity of maternal 
discipline, and Tom returned to the one plan that 
promised to have any effect. 

“ I will give you this if you will keep silent 
about seeing me here. Do you think you can 
remember ? ” he said impressively, holding up a 
silver quarter. 

“ I don’t know as I could for a quarter ; mebbe 
I might for a half,” said little Jason, not at all 
eagerly, and with his mouth full of doughnut. 

“ Are you sure that you could for half a dollar ? ” 
asked Tom sternly, but with an anxiety which 
was perfectly patent to little Jason’s keen eyes. 

Little Jason clutched the extended half-dollar 
in a grimy fist, and walked resolutely out at the 
door. “ If I should feel as if I was goin’ to for- 
get I’ll come over to your house, ’n’ you can give 
me another half-dollar,” he called out. 

Tom looked after him with a sinking heart. 
He was entirely at the mercy of this little mon- 
ster, and his only hope lay in the extent of the 


LITTLE JASON'S SECRET 219 

monster’s appetite for half-dollars and his own 
ability to furnish them. Oh ! why had he been so 
careless ? Why had he not searched every nook 
and cranny of that dusty old den before he opened 
the desk ? It would have been better still to keep 
away from Milt’s studio altogether. 

Pheny had had what she called “a beautiful 
time ” at the picnic. Luella Pickering was more 
and more friendly ; she treated her almost as if 
that dreadful change in her father’s fortunes had 
never come. Whether this was partly because 
the girls whom Luella regarded most highly wel- 
comed her so heartily, Pheny did not question; 
she had not a suspicious mind. Her father had 
seemed less averse to her going, since she had so 
heartily assured him after the lawn party that his 
predictions about “ heart-burnings ” had not been 
fulfilled. 

Pheny was radiant that night ; it seemed almost 
as if the old times were coming back. If only 
the boys would have gone ! Luella had actually 
invited them all, there being a scarcity of boys, 
who are even more necessary at a picnic than at a 
lawn party ; but Greg had jeered openly at such 
“ girl fandangoes,” and Duff would not be per- 
suaded, although he had gone to Pigeon Hill, 
through a brush thicket that was almost impene- 
trable, and got a great quantity of mountain 
laurel, which grew only there, to adorn the hay- 


220 


TOM PICKERING OF 'SCUTNEY. 


carts that Luella had secured as a picturesque 
means of conveyance. Luella had admitted to 
Pheny, in a burst of grateful candor, that Tom 
would not have done as much ; adding, with 
a sigh, that boys were hard to manage, and she 
didn’t know what to make of the way in which 
Tom was behaving. In fact, Tom had been really 
ill-natured about the picnic ; and Polly Rawson — 
that little thing — had suggested imperfections in 
his bringing-up. 


THE LIGHT IN THE TOOL-HOUSE . 


221 


CHAPTER XX. 

THE LIGHT IN THE TOOL-HOUSE. 

M ILT was dejected that night, Pheny found, to 
the sudden lessening of her own spirits. He 
had had a hard day in the Tramp. The people who 
had hired it would stay longer than was prudent ; 
the wind had fallen, and they had been obliged to 
row home. He was too tired to have any spirit 
for his work ; but the light would appear in the 
tool-house for all that, Pheny was sure. He had 
to work away at the simplest elements, poor Milt ! 
His lack of training made it necessary to do in 
three months the work of a year or more, if 
there was to be any chance of his winning that 
prize. 

Pheny had brought home a box of caramels 
from the picnic, and three had fallen to little 
Jason’s share. The young epicure found them to 
be of a far superior flavor to anything afforded by 
the little peanut shanty on the beach, and resolved 
to become the possessor of the remnant which 
Pheny, with a prudent mind, had reserved for an- 
other time. 


222 


TOM PICKERING OF ’ SCUTNEY. \ 


He beckoned Pheny mysteriously out upon the 
moonlighted back porch. “ I’ve got an orfle se- 
cret,” he said, with an assumption of breathless 
eagerness. “You’d orter know it ; a feller hired 
me not to tell. Look-a-here ! ” and little Jason 
produced the shining half-dollar. “ But I’m a-goin’ 
to tell, because I’d orter — for them caramels ! ” 

“ O little Jason ! I’m afraid you’re a very bad 
boy,” said Pheny severely, believing that little 
Jason had drawn upon his imagination for this 
plan to secure the caramels. “ Where did you 
get that money ? ” 

“ Ain’t I a-tellin’ you that a feller give it to me 
for not tellin’ what he was doin’ to Milt’s drawrin’, 
unlockin’ his desk in the tool-house with a whole 
slew of keys and a wire ; and if it hadn’t been for 
me he’d have stealed it or tored it up ? I was 
under the bench ; and ’twas that feller with the 
glasses that the boys don’t think much of — and 
there ! I’ve been and told you, and you ain’t 
given me the caramels, and he won’t give me no 
more half-dollars ! ” Little Jason realized that in 
his greed for caramels his ordinary shrewdness 
had failed him, and he began to whimper. 

“Do stop, little Jason! You shall have the 
caramels if you want them,” said Pheny, hastily 
bringing them out. “ But you mustn’t tell such 
stories. I can’t think what you mean. Tom Pick- 
ering would not open Milt’s desk ! ” But though 


THE LIGHT IN THE TOOL-HOUSE. 223 

she spoke in an assured tone, Pheny’s heart beat 
wildly with doubt and fear. It was she who had 
revealed to Tom Pickering the secret of Milt’s 
studio. The design was only half completed, Milt 
worked so slowly upon it ; but if anything should 
happen to it he might never have the courage to 
begin again. “ You mustn’t tell things, anyway, 
when you’ve promised not to,” said Pheny, trying 
not to lose sight of her duty toward little Jason’s 
morals, even in her distress. 

“ I ain’t a-goin’ to no more,” said little Jason, 
munching a caramel with much satisfaction. “Pm 
goin’ to make him pay me another half-dollar.” 

Pheny resolved that she would at some later 
time endeavor to make little Jason see the evil of 
his ways ; now she could think of nothing but this 
strange story about Tom Pickering, and try to de- 
cide what course she should take. It would not 
do to warn Milt, he was so hot-headed and resent- 
ful ; and he was already bitter against Tom Picker- 
ing on account of what he called his supercilious 
airs. He had been angry because Tom had merely 
seen his design and spoken of it. Of course Tom 
had been moved only by curiosity, if he had 
done what little Jason accused him of ; and yet 
Luella had told her how ambitious he was, how 
determined to succeed in whatever he undertook, 
and that he was at work upon some drawing which 
absorbed him and made him “ cross.” She did 


224 


TOM PICKERING OF ’ SCUTNEY . i 


not know that it was for a prize ; but Tom was un- 
communicative, even more so than Milt. 

That was it ! Pheny saw it in a flash. And 
she had given him the opportunity to take this ad- 
vantage of Milt. He, with his unlimited oppor- 
tunities, had wished to ruin poor Milt who had 
none, and she had shown him how ! 

She felt a strong impulse to denounce Tom 
Pickering to his face, to tell him how base and 
cruel he was ; but she had not enough proof. 
Little Jason’s reputation for truthfulness was but 
poor. She must watch the tool-house while Milt’s 
drawings were there ; it must never be possible 
for Tom to go in there again ! Although she 
racked her brains, Pheny could not think of any 
better plan than this. She might advise Milt to 
put a lock on the door ; but Milt, who had such a 
way of going to the bottom of things, would not 
rest until he discovered what she meant. He 
might, indeed, understand at once, for he was 
probably conscious of the rivalry which she had 
never suspected. 

Milt worked that night in spite of his fatigue ; 
and Pheny, crouching in her window, propped 
open her sleepy eyes, and watched until the light 
should vanish. She could not depend upon hear- 
ing Milt come in, for he crept softly lest his 
father should hear. When the light had disap- 
peared, she waited long enough for him to have 


THE LIGHT IN THE TOOL-HOUSE. 225 

reached his room, and then slipped softly out to 
the tool-house. She had been used to open that 
old desk without a key ; if one shook the lid from 
side to side it would open at a certain point. She 
tried at first in vain ; she would stay there all 
night, so she thought. It was dark and lonely, 
but she would protect Milt’s precious design ! 
But, fortunately, with a few more efforts, the old 
desk did open ; and Pheny slipped the portfolio 
out, and ran with it to her room. There was no 
difficulty about replacing it, for Milt never had 
time to go there in the morning. But he stayed 
there so late at night ! Pheny. was used to going 
early to bed. At ten o’clock she had to begin to 
unravel all the puzzles she could find, to keep her- 
self awake. At eleven, the multiplication table 
said backward scarcely prevented her from drop- 
ping off to sleep. She would have asked Duff to 
help her ; but Duff would have “ pitched into ” 
Tom, to use his own phrase, without loss of time. 

Fortunately for Pheny, now that the haying was 
over, Milt had more time in the day, and worked 
less often at night. But one week in July he 
worked three nights in succession ; and on the 
third Pheny, quite worn out with watching, fell 
asleep at her window. She awoke with a start as 
her little clock struck twelve ; the light in the 
tool-house was out ! How long the design had 
been in danger she could not tell. She ran down 


226 


TOM PICKERING OF 'SCUTNEY. 


hastily, feeling guilty that she had slumbered on 
guard. The lock was more stubborn in yielding 
than usual ; it was the more difficult to open it 
that one must be careful not to make a sound. 
Another noise mingled with her careful pushing, 
a rustling of shavings, a footfall, soft but distinct. 

Pheny could not repress a little cry as she 
turned her head, and saw, only a few feet be- 
hind her, a figure all in white. 


LUELLA PICKERING'S SUSPICION. 22 7 


CHAPTER XXI. 

luella Pickering’s suspicion. 

I T was an unspeakable relief to Pheny Jecks 
when the moonlight fell upon the figure be- 
hind her, and showed her who it was. 

“ Luella Pickering ! ” she cried in amazement. 
“ What is the matter ? What are you doing 
here ? ” 

But Luella answered not a word. She was in 
her nightgown, with only a light white shawl 
thrown over her shoulders ; and her face looked 
so white and set in the moonlight that Pheny felt 
a cold chill of terror. 

“ Oh, say something, Luella ! Won’t you an- 
swer me ? ” cried Pheny piteously. Her first thrill 
of angry suspicion that Luella had come there, like 
Tom, to spy upon or injure Milt, had changed to 
fright at the girl’s strange aspect. 

Luella stretched out her hands as if in search 
of something, and Pheny caught them in hers. A 
sudden flash of recollection had given her the clew 
to Luella’s mysterious appearance. She had heard, 
when they were little girls together at school, 


228 


TOM PICKERING OF } SCUTNEY. 


that Luella walked in her sleep. Seizing her 
hands, Pheny shook her roughly ; she had read 
somewhere that vigorous means were necessary to 
awaken sleep-walkers. 

Luella came to herself with a little shuddering 
cry. “Oh, where am I? How came I here? Is 
it you, Pheny Jecks?” She was trembling vio- 
lently now, and Pheny tried to soothe her. 

“You’re quite safe; I’ll go home with you,” 
said she. “ It’s only across the field, and see how 
bright the moonlight is ! We sha’n’t think of be- 
ing afraid.” 

Inwardly Pheny was quaking : her midnight ex- 
cursions had always tried her nerves, and now she 
had been so startled, and Luella seemed so strange ; 
but for Luella’s sake she must be brave ! 

“ I know where I am now,” said Luella quietly. 
“ I am in the tool-house where the old desk is. I 
walked in my sleep, and I came here because — 
because it worried me ; something worried me. 
That is the way that I always do. I go where 
there are things that worry me.” 

Pheny held her breath in sharp expectation. 
Did Luella know? Was she going to speak of 
what Tom had done ? 

“ I haven’t done it often lately,” Luella contin- 
ued ; “ only once before in a year. I frightened 
Madame Bassecour, my French governess, so that 
she left. I believe if Polly Rawson had seen me 


LUELLA PICKERING'S SUSPICION. 229 

she would have gone into fits. How in the world 
came you here ? ” she added, as if struck by a 
sudden thought. “ It must be the middle of the 
night ! ” 

“ I — I came to take care of something,” an- 
swered Pheny. 

“ How brave you are ! And yet in some ways 
you seem a rather timid little thing,” said Luella 
reflectively. 

“ It was for one of the boys,” said Pheny simply, 
as if that fact explained any amount of courage. 
She wondered whether Luella understood what it 
was that she was taking care of. 

If Luella did, she made no sign. She leaned a 
little upon Pheny, as they crossed the field ; the 
moonlight, made everything as clear as day, but 
Luella shivered in the chilly wind, and complained 
that the rough ground hurt her feet. 

“ I didn’t think that you would have to go back 
alone,” she added. “ Sha’n’t I call Tom up to go 
with you ? I don’t want to rouse one of the ser- 
vants. I don’t want them to know about me, but 
Tom knows.” 

“ Oh, no, no ! I don’t want him ; I’m not afraid 
— I mean I’m used to being out at night ! ” said 
Pheny quickly. 

“ Why do you dislike Tom so much ? ” asked 
Luella curiously rather than resentfully, though 
there was a trace of the latter feeling in her tone. 


230 


TOM PICKERING OF 'SCUTNEY. 


“ He seemed at first to get on with you better 
than he usually does with girls; but now, lately, 
you can’t bear him ! ” 

“ I — I’m not used to any boys but my own 
brothers,” stammered Pheny. Clearly Luella did 
not know about Tom, or she would not have asked 
her that question. But what did she mean about 
the old desk and her worry ? Pheny was too worn 
out to think to-night. She put Milt’s portfolio 
under her pillow and slept upon it, but only to 
dream that the Tramp had turned into a dragon, 
with brass-clawed feet, like the old desk, and that 
Tom Pickering, astride it, was riding Milt down. 
As for Luella, she had crept shivering to bed, 
but could not sleep at all. She was like Tom 
in one respect ; when an idea had taken posses- 
sion of her mind she dwelt upon it constantly. 
To-night she felt half angry with herself that it 
was so. 

“I ought not to let things worry me; papa 
said I mustn’t,” she said to herself fretfully. “I 
almost wish that Tom hadn’t told me. Why can’t 
I be easy about it, and say that it isn’t my affair, 
as he does? But it would be so dreadful if it 
should be true ! They’ve had such a hard time — 
to be poor and friendless, to have all one’s world 
changed so suddenly, must be dreadful. I wish I 
dared tell papa what I think. Something, I scarcely 
know what, makes me believe that he suspects it. 


LUELLA PICKERING'S SUSPICIONS. 23 1 

Would he suspect a wrong like that and not try to 
right it ? Perhaps he would say, like Tom, that it 
wasn’t his affair. And he would call me a little 
girl ! I’m not a little girl any more. I must — I 
will find out, whether it is true ! ” 

At last, when the dawn was gray on her window- 
panes, Luella slept heavily, and even in dreams 
made no more excursions to the old desk in the 
tool-house. 


232 TOM PICKERING OF 'SCUTNEY. 


CHAPTER XXII. 

UNCLE DICK AND MR. JECKS. 

OM PICKERING’S mind had been in a dis- 



JL turbed state ever since he parted from little 
Jason. It was absurd that one should be in ter- 
ror of a pygmy like him ; but there seemed to be 
no way to crush him, or to close his irresponsible 
little mouth unless he chose to do it himself. It 
was astonishing, Tom feared it was ominous, that 
he had not appeared to demand more half-dollars. 
He had seen him (keeping himself at a prudent 
distance) haunting the little confectionery shanty 
on the beach, and he hoped that he was merely 
indulging in a peanut debauch, which would con- 
tent him until his money was spent ; but there 
was the dreadful possibility that he demanded no 
further price for silence because he had told. 

If so, those rough Jecks boys might be expected 
at any time to offer him physical violence. Tom 
said to himself that they were brutal enough for 
that ; but he was no coward physically, and it was 
not this that he feared so much as the disgrace 
of having people know that he had been guilty of 


UNCLE DICK AND MR. JECKS . 


233 


a base action. To have his own family know it 
seemed worst of all. He had very soon begun to 
cast about in his mind for some way of explaining 
the matter to Luella before she should hear little 
Jason’s version. He hit upon a plan which seemed 
to him remarkably clever and not so very dis- 
honest. 

“I’ve got a queer notion into my head, Luella,” 
he said, following her out to the hammock in her 
favorite nook of the piazza. “ I’ve wanted to talk 
to you about it before, but that girl is always 
around.” Polly Rawson had gone to visit some 
friends at the hotel, and given Tom an opportu- 
nity which he had really been waiting for. 

Luella opened her eyes wide. It was very sel- 
dom that Tom wished to talk about anything with 
her, especially of late. 

“You know that Uncle Dick and Mr. Jecks 
used to be great friends. They were in college 
together, and after Jecks was married Uncle Dick 
lived in his family.” 

“ I think I have heard. I had forgotten,” said 
Luella. 

“ I’ll tell you what reminded me of it. There’s 
an old desk out in their tool-house that I think 
was Uncle Dick’s. I saw letters and papers in it 
with his name on them. I wandered in there 
one day ; the maid-of-all-work’s small son was in 
there — a regular imp he is, by the way. The 


234 TOM PICKERING OF 'SCUTNEY. 

place is filled with old lumber ; of course I didn’t 
think there was any harm in examining it.” Tom 
didn’t mention the key ; Luella might never hear 
of it. “ The first thing I saw was Uncle Dick’s 
name, and that brought something to my mind 
like a flash. I didn’t think much about it at first, 
but it’s been haunting me ever since.” This 
might have been true if something else had not 
haunted Tom with much greater persistency. “I 
wonder if you remember, as I do, what we heard 
Aunt Margaret say when she was so ill, just be- 
fore she died. It was three years ago ; and we 
were a pair of youngsters, quarrelling in the nurs- 
ery because I had scalped one of your old dolls. 
You pretended that you still cared for them, though 
you didn’t. Aunt Margaret cried out, so that you 
could hear her a mile away, ‘ It isn’t Milton Jecks 
who is guilty. It is Dick, and we must save him, 
we must save him ! ’ ” 

Luella grew pale. “ I remember it, Tom ! I 
remember it ! ” she cried. “ I thought it was 
dreadful, but I didn’t think it meant anything. 
They said she was wandering. You don’t think 
— O Tom, you don’t think” — 

“Uncle Dick went away just after that, you 
know, away off to South Africa, and he has never 
come back; and Milton Jecks was arrested for 
forgery. I suppose, of course, that it was a fancy 
that Aunt Margaret got into her head because she 


UNCLE DICK AND MR. JECKS. 


235 


was ill ; but it isn’t to be wondered at that when 
I saw that old desk I was curious to know what 
was in it.” 

“ But you do think that she was delirious, don’t 
you, Tom?” asked Luella eagerly. “You don’t 
think that what she said could possibly be true ? ” 

Tom looked a little alarmed. He had not 
meant that Luella should take this so seriously. 
His moral sensibilities were not naturally very 
acute, and his selfishness had blunted them. That 
there were people who followed duty as an aim, 
rather than success, he was aware ; but he had a 
vague idea that they were somewhat namby-pamby 
people, who were content to eat their pudding 
without any plums, and come in at the fag-end 
in the race of life. Luella’ s shocked face startled 
him a little. 

“ You mustn’t say anything to anybody, you 
know,” he said earnestly. “ You might make an 
endless lot of mischief. And then there might 
not be anything in it ; there probably isn’t. But 
you see it was natural that I should want to look 
into that old desk when I knew, the first moment 
I saw it, that it was Uncle Dick’s.” 

But it was not the fact that he had looked into 
the old desk which impressed Luella. “ It is too 
dreadful that any one should have suffered like 
that unjustly!” she said; “and how can it ever 
be set right now?” 


236 TOM PICKERING OF 'SCUTNEY. 


CHAPTER XXIII. 

BRIGHT HOPES. 

I T was a terrible suspicion that had taken pos- 
session of Luella Pickering’s mind. She tried 
hard to fight it down. “ I can’t believe,” she told 
Tom, “that if Uncle Dick could have done a 
wicked thing like that he would ever have allowed 
another to bear the consequences ! ” 

“ Oh, no ! it isn’t at all likely. When I think of 
it I see that it isn’t,” said Tom comfortably. “But 
I did get a little worked up about it at first. And 
that’s why ” — 

“ But Uncle Dick was very ill when he first went 
away ; he had brain-fever, and papa thought he 
would die. Dr. Corbin, who went with him, would 
have tried to keep him from knowing things that 
would distress him. Tom, don’t you think it may be 
that it was so, and Uncle Dick has never known ? ” 
“ A fellow can’t very well commit forgery with- 
out knowing it ! ” said Tom jocularly. 

“ I mean may not have known that another per- 
son — his friend too — was suffering in his stead,” 
Luella explained. 


BRIGHT HOPES. 


237 


“ Oh, now you’re making too much fuss about 
it, Luella!” Tom impatiently replied. “It was 
too long ago for me to think anything about it. 
And it isn’t any of our business, anyway. I ought 
to have known better than to say anything about 
it to a girl ; you’re about as bad as Polly Rawson 
and that foolish little Pheny Jecks ! ” 

“I only wish I were as good as Pheny Jecks,” 
said Luella stoutly. “ And even Polly was never 
so proud and hateful as I. I felt so much above 
the Jeckses, and now — O Tom! what if this 
should be true ? ” 

“ Why shouldn’t you feel above them ? I’m 
sure I do,” said Tom easily, “in spite of the fact 
that their muscle is better developed than mine. 
I saw Milt thrashing a young lobsterman half as 
large again as he was the other day ! ” 

“ Why did he thrash him ? ” asked Luella. 

“ Oh ! they’re born fighters, or at least they 
must have learned in their cradles to strike out 
straight from the shoulder,” Tom answered, as he 
sauntered away. But he turned back, feeling a 
little twinge of conscience. It was foolish, as well 
as mean, to be unjust when one had nothing to 
gain by it ! “I believe the lobsterman was abus- 
ing a dog or a cat,” he said. 

It was on the third night after this conversation 
that Luella walked in her sleep to the tool-house. 
Pheny returned Milt’s portfolio to the old desk, 


238 TOM PICKERING OF ’ SCUTNEY. 

with a greater feeling of insecurity than ever be- 
fore. She aroused her courage almost to the 
point of advising Milt to keep his drawings else- 
where, but the dread of a quarrel still prevented 
her. Poor Pheny ! She was destined to wish 
afterward, with bitter regret, that she had warned 
Milt, at any cost. 

The summer days slipped by at Sandy Beach, 
and all anxieties lay beneath the surface. Even 
Milt’s brow grew clearer, to Pheny’s great de- 
light. This was because the Tramp had been 
reaping a rich harvest, by reason of the great 
number of visitors at the hotel. He had been able 
to pay for regular lessons from the artist who was 
staying at the hotel, and had saved money besides. 

His voice trembled when, on a late August 
evening, he talked to Pheny of his good fortune, 
sitting on the railing of the porch, with the moon- 
rays lighting up his eager face. 

“ Mr. Robson says I have real talent, marmee ! 
I showed him my design yesterday ” — 

“ Oh ! is it finished ? ” asked Pheny anxiously. 

“ Almost. I’ve made half a dozen copies, but 
always keeping to the same idea which struck me 
at first. I knew it was good ! Robson was sur- 
prised at its originality,” Milt went on. “A fellow 
couldn’t boast so to every one, but that’s the com- 
fort of having a marmee ! ” he added lightly. “ It 
must be sent in next week. I’m going to make 


BRIGHT HOPES. 


239 


a desperate effort at the finishing touches. Of 
course I don’t really expect the prize, you know, 
but I may win some recognition ; it may be an 
opening for me.” 

“ O Milt, you ought to have the prize ! You 
have worked so hard,” said Pheny, with deepest 
sympathy. 

“ And I’ve been thinking, marmee, that I’ve 
been pretty crabbed and cross. Perhaps I’ve been 
too bitter against those people over there.” Milt 
pointed toward the Pickering cottage. “ That girl 
has been pretty good to you.” 

Pheny nodded emphatically. “ I’ve had beauti- 
ful times ; but they would have been better if you 
boys would have gone too.” 

“ We’re a lot of unlicked cubs, but we may be a 
credit to you yet, marmee ; who knows ? But what 
I was going to say was about that candy-pull 
in the great kitchen.” 

“ Oh ! how did you know ? ” cried Pheny, flush- 
ing quickly. “ I never really expected to have it. 
Luella said how nice it would be ; she hasn’t been 
in very good spirits lately, and I think she is tired 
of entertaining so much. I did say to Arabella 
that I wished I could have it while the Craigie 
girls are visiting Luella ” — 

“ And Arabella said to father that you ought to 
have it. He gave in at once, too, and I can pro- 
vide the funds for my share.” There was a little 


240 


TOM PICKERING OF 'SCUTNEY. 


ring of pride in Milt’s tone. “ Now, don’t fret 
about taking it ; molasses and peanuts don’t cost 
much ! ” 

Pheny flew at him, and almost strangled him 
with a hug. “ And you boys won’t go skulking 
off ? People hardly know that I have any boys at 
all ! ” she said. 

Milt’s face fell a little. “ I’m not much of a 
fellow for fandangoes, you know. I shall be apt to 
disgrace you, but I’ll do my best,” he replied. 

To Pheny things seemed almost too good to be 
true, — Milt’s bright prospects, and her candy-pull ! 
The girls had admired that great kitchen, into 
which they had once had a peep. The house was 
nearly two hundred years old, and its great beams 
were so low that one could almost touch them. 
There was a huge fireplace, with a crane, in one 
end of the kitchen ; and the candy was to be made 
in the great kettle that hung upon the crane. 
Luella said it would be “ unique.” 


THE FATE OF MILT'S DESIGN. 


24I 


CHAPTER XXIV. 

THE FATE OF MILT’S DESIGN. 

S O the candy-pull was given. The Jecks boys 
behaved “ like lambs,” as Pheny gratefully 
declared. Even Greg, from whom rebellion was 
expected, collected birch bark for the invitations ; 
and Duff displayed great skill and enthusiasm in 
decorating the kitchen with green boughs. 

One little cloud marred Pheny’s pleasure. Tom 
came, although she had strongly hoped that he 
wouldn’t. By this time she was trying to think 
that little Jason had been the victim of a bad 
dream, although he stuck to his story pertina- 
ciously. As for Luella, she could scarcely have 
known what she was saying, aroused so suddenly 
from her sleep-walking. Pheny still kept diligent 
guard over Milt’s portfolio of drawings, but her 
fears were gradually disappearing. 

Tom had had serious doubts about the desira- 
bility of meeting little Jason, who was sure to be 
on hand at a candy-pull ; but his fears, like Pheny’s, 
were gradually disappearing. It seemed probable 
that little Jason’s greed had been satiated by the 


2^2 


TOM PICKERING OF 'SCUTNEY. 


half-dollar, or possibly the affair had slipped out 
of his small memory. And Tom still had a fever- 
ish desire to know what Milt was doing. In the 
few encounters he had had with him of late, he 
seemed so softened and civilized, as Tom said to 
himself, that it might not be impossible to obtain 
the information from Milt himself. So Tom de- 
fied the power of his small persecutor, and went to 
the candy-pull. 

He was quite safe for the time, for little Jason’s 
whole soul was absorbed in the prospect of un- 
limited peanut candy. Moreover, he had a whole- 
some fear of Pheny, whose morals he knew to be 
oppressively strict. It was this fear, and not for- 
getfulness, that had deterred him from further de- 
mands upon his victim ; but little Jason was only 
biding his time. 

The candy-pull was the greatest of successes. 
Pheny, having no false pride to distress her with 
the poverty of her surroundings, was so genuinely 
merry that she made all her guests so. The boys 
persevered in their lamb-like behavior, although 
Greg privately confided to Duff that he felt him- 
self likely to utter a war-whoop at any minute. It 
disturbed Pheny somewhat that, toward the close 
of the evening, Milt and Tom Pickering wandered 
out of the house together, and remained a long 
time. They were apparently on good terms ; but 
although Milt was behaving so beautifully, she 


THE FATE OF MILT’S DESIGN. 


243 


said to herself that it would be easy for Tom Pick- 
ering to “ rub him the wrong way.” And there 
was always the suspicion in her mind that Tom 
wished to take an unfair advantage of him. 

She thought she heard their voices out upon 
the north porch. Her father had come out of his 
den, and was walking in that direction also. He 
looked very much disturbed ; probably the noise 
had annoyed him, although his room was remote 
from the kitchen, and she had stuffed all keyholes 
and crannies with cotton. Milt was talking rap- 
idly. He was evidently in one of his rare confi- 
dential moods. Happiness and hope had opened 
his heart. Pheny felt a thrill of sympathy ; but 
it was dangerous to make a confidant of Tom Pick- 
ering ! And if his father should hear! But he 
was turning back at the sound of voices when 
Tom’s voice, sounding strained and shrill, cut the 
silence, — 

“ And so you really mean to try for the Tre- 
maine prize ? ” 

Pheny immediately called the two boys into the 
house, giving as a reason that the festivities were 
culminating in a country dance, in which every- 
one was expected fo join. She was anxious lest 
her father had heard Tom’s shrill exclamation ; 
but this seemed a slight danger compared to that 
to which Milt was exposed by Tom’s unscrupulous 
rivalry. She knew, now, that he also was trying 


244 


TOM PICKERING OF ’ SCUTNEY , i 


for the prize. She wished she had warned Milt 
not to be so confidential ; but perhaps, after all, it 
was better to have friendly relations between the 
boys. She could protect the design for the little 
time that remained before the examination ; and 
perhaps she was too nervous, and had misjudged 
Tom. 

So Pheny tried to shake off her fears, and foot 
it as gayly as any down the long room, between 
the rows of merry boys and girls, to the music of 
the ancient violin, which Greg, perched upon the 
old buffet in the corner, was playing with more 
vigor than skill, but to the ardent satisfaction of 
every one. 

Milt danced, which was the greatest of wonders, 
for he had an unspeakable scorn of such “ antics.” 
He was in greater spirits to-night than Pheny had 
ever seen him. 

“ Such a delightful affair as it was ! ” said Minna 
Cushing, who was the great social authority, as 
they trooped off; and Selina Craigie said “ the scene 
was so picturesque that she wished it could have 
been photographed.” It was small wonder that 
Pheny, whose love of society was as natural as 
her breath, should have her head a little turned ! 
She slipped out to get the portfolio as soon as the 
house was quiet, without looking for the light ; 
she did not think it possible that Milt would work 
to-night. But he was there ; nothing would turn 


THE FATE OF MILT'S DESIGN. 245 

Milt from his purpose ! She stole softly back 
again, and curled herself up in her broad window- 
seat, to wait as usual until the light was out. It 
was after eleven now ; surely Milt would not work 
long. She was not obliged to resort to the ordi- 
nary devices of rhymes and arithmetical problems 
to keep awake to-night ; her brain was so full of 
exciting happenings that there was not the slight- 
est danger of her falling asleep, she thought. 

She kept her eyes on the light ; and it began to 
dance along before her, through green fields, over 
a treacherous bog in which she had hard work to 
keep her footing, through long, long, endless rows 
of a country dance ! And then, suddenly, it 
changed to a brilliant burst of sunlight ; and Pheny 
sprang to her feet with a cry, the morning sun 
shining full in her face. 

Now, when her vigils were so nearly ended, she 
had let sleep overcome her ! 

It was much later than she usually awoke ; the 
family were at breakfast, and the air was full of 
cheerful morning sounds. Pheny took heart a 
little as she hurriedly dressed. It was not likely 
that anything had happened to the precious de- 
sign. She was too much inclined to take counsel 
of her fears ; Arabella often said so. 

She flew around the corner of the house, out of 
sight of the breakfast-room, and so out to the tool- 
house. The old desk was partially open, held so 


246 TOM PICKERING OF ’ SCUTNEY . 

by Milt’s portfolio, from which many of the papers 
had dropped upon the floor. Torn into a dozen 
pieces, and scattered among the shavings and saw- 
dust, was the almost completed plan of a library 
— the Tremaine prize design! 


VANISHED HOPES . 


247 


CHAPTER XXV. 


VANISHED HOPES. 



iHENY picked up the pieces of the torn design, 


± and matched them together in a kind of 
numb apathy. It was too dreadful to be true ! It 
could not be true, she thought. 

She heard approaching steps and voices, — Milt’s 
voice, with a doubtful accent, and little Jason’s 
shrill pipe. 

“Yes, sir-ee, he was here, an’ you’d better 
b’lieve it ! An’ the other time he had your draw- 
rin’ in his hand, and he’d ’a’ tored it all to pieces if 
it hadn’t been for me ! And this mornin’ mammy 
seed him, an’ it wasn’t morn’n three o’clock ; an’, 
says she, * What’s that Pickering feller skulkin’ along 
by the stone wall for, this time o’night ? ’ I knew 
in a minute that he’d been after your drawrin’ ! ” 

Milt stood in the doorway by this time, and saw 
Pheny with her hands full of the fragments of the 
design. 

“ You’d better b’lieve it ! ” piped little Jason, in 
shrill repetition ; and to Pheny his voice sounded 
far away, like something heard in a dream. “ See 


248 TOM PICKERING OF \ SCUTNE Y 

now ! He has tored it jest because I wasn’t here ! 
An’ I told her when he was here before, if he did 
give me half a dollar not to tell ! ” 

“ He told you ? You knew what that skulking 
thief was trying to do, and you didn’t tell me ? ” 
cried Milt, snatching the fragments from Pheny’s 
hands, his face so dreadful in its white wrath that 
she turned her eyes away from it. 

“O Milt, I was afraid to tell ! You are dread- 
ful when you are angry ! And I have watched 
and watched every night. I have taken the de- 
sign into the house as soon as you left it; only 
last night — oh ! I don’t see how it happened — I 
fell asleep ! ” 

“ You have taken it into the house ? You have 
kept awake every night all summer to do that ? ” 
repeated Milt, half incredulously. “ A girl’s way ! 
An idiotic way ! Why couldn’t you have told me 
that it wasn’t safe, here from that cur ? ” 

“There was the chance that little Jason might 
be mistaken,” pleaded Pheny. “ And O Milt, I 
was afraid of what might happen ! I was afraid 
you would fight ! ” 

“He shall answer for it ! Don’t you doubt 
that ! ” declared Milt. “ I may forgive you — some 
time ” — Milt drew a long, hard breath — “ because 
you are only a girl.” (It was as if he meant, “you 
are only a simpleton ! ”) « But he shall answer 

for it.” 


VANISHED HOPES . 249 

There was a grim determination in Milt’s tone 
that filled Pheny with unspeakable foreboding. 

“ Milt, you — you wouldn’t strike him ? That 
is so wicked, so brutal ! ” 

“ What else is there to do to a brute like him ? 
Perhaps you think I would better go and tell him 
I sha’n’t speak to him any more,” said Milt, in a 
mimicking falsetto. “ Or ask him if he won’t 
please not do so again, so that we can kiss and 
make up ! ” 

It was useless to try to influence Milt while he 
was in this white heat of rage. But another ar- 
gument suddenly occurred to Pheny. 

“ Milt, we haven’t any proof that he did it,” she 
said earnestly. “ If Arabella did see him, which 
may be a mistake, he might have had some other 
reason for being out early in the morning. And 
wouldn’t he have been more likely to carry the 
design off slyly ” — 

Milt had stooped to the floor, and picked up 
under the desk a knife with a curiously carved 
handle, on one end a turbaned negro’s head, which, 
turned another way, became a many-petaled rose. 
The thin, curved blade was open. It was Tom 
Pickering’s knife ; he had displayed it the night 
before, boasting of its sharpness as he cut candy 
with it. Milt held it up silently before Pheny’s 
eyes, his boy face looking suddenly old with the 
rage and scorn that marred it. 


250 TOM PICKERING OF 'SCUTNEY. 

“ You’ll make him give me another half-dollar 
’cause I didn’t tell for so long ; won’t you, Milt ? 
An’ you’ll give me one, too, for — for tellin’ you; 
won’t you, Milt?” little Jason’s strident voice 
went on insisting, sounding to Pheny so strangely 
like something heard in a nightmare. 

“ He shall answer for it ! ” repeated Milt, this 
time with a kind of dogged determination, which 
was even worse, Pheny thought, than his violent 
passion. She tried to hold him back as he went 
out. 

“ O Milt, such dreadful things are done when 
people are angry ! And you boys were always so 
quick and passionate — and not having any mother 
either ! And the dear old dad couldn’t look after 
you much, things have been so terrible for him ; 
sometimes I’m afraid, Milt, that his mind is giv- 
ing way. How could he bear it if — if you were 
to do anything dreadful ? You ought not to mind 
it so much, Milt — you, who are so clever! You 
will do great things yet, though you have had this 
little disappointment.” 

“ Little disappointment ! ” echoed Milt with 
flashing eyes. (That was not a happily chosen 
word, as Pheny felt as soon as it was uttered.) 
“ If you knew what it was to put your whole 
heart and soul into anything, to try to make up 
for the lack of years of training in a few months, 
to work for weeks on a few lines, to struggle with 


VANISHED HOPES . 


251 


discouragement, to be so tired that you were stu- 
pid, and yet never to give in ! To know that a 
fellow, a dozen fellows probably, with every ad- 
vantage, were pushing on ahead of you, and then, 
at last, to have some one who knew tell you that 
your idea was original, was like an inspiration, it 
was so good, and that there was a chance of suc- 
cess — and then to find this ! Would you call it 
a little disappointment ? ” There was a dry sob 
in Milt’s throat. Pheny welcomed it, in the midst 
of her heartache, as a sign of softening. 

“ And I was so idiotic with hope as to gabble to 
that treacherous sneak about it ! And you — you 
knew what he was about, and you let him go on ! ” 

Pheny threw her arms around him, but he shook 
her off roughly. 

“ I suppose you did as well as you knew — but 
keep away from me now. I have something to 
attend to.” And off rushed Milt, with his white, 
set face that scarcely looked like Milt’s. 


252 


TOM PICKERING OF ’ SCUTNEY. 


CHAPTER XXVI. 

IN PURSUIT. 

P HENY ran breathlessly in search of help, she 
scarcely knew where. Milt must be pre- 
vented from meeting Tom while his anger was so 
hot. 

She found Greg upon the southern slope of the 
orchard, turning his largest melon into the sun. 

“ O Greg ! you must follow Milt,” she panted, 
“ and keep him from finding Tom Pickering. 
Something has happened, and there will be a 
dreadful quarrel. Milt is almost beside himself 
with anger.” 

“ That fellow ! What has he been up to ? If 
it’s anything mean, I hope Milt will thrash him. 
It’s just what he needs,” said Greg calmly, tak- 
ing great pains to have the unripe side of his 
melon exposed to the sun’s rays. 

“ But this is serious , Greg ! He has destroyed 
Milt’s prize design ! It was almost finished, and 
he has torn it to pieces ! ” cried Pheny. 

Greg’s honest, ugly face actually grew pale un- 
der its sunburn and freckles as Pheny rapidly re- 


IN PURSUIT. 253 

lated the story of Tom’s tampering with the old 
desk. 

“ I don’t know how Milt can bear it,” he said 
in a voice that shook. 

“ But he isn’t bearing it,” cried Pheny despair- 
ingly. “ I’m afraid he will do something dreadful. 
If it were you or Duff — you bluster and bluster, 
and it doesn’t amount to much,” she added with 
sisterly frankness ; “ but Milt is — is different. 
Greg, I’m afraid he will kill Tom Pickering.” 

“You always were a ’fraid cat,” said Greg. 
“You ought to know Milt better than that,” he 
added gravely. 

“ He isn’t Milt now ; he is all swallowed up in 
his rage,” said Pheny. 

« Well, his rage will have time to cool before he 
finds Tom Pickering,” replied Greg after a mo- 
ment’s reflection. “ He came over and hired the 
Tramp of me just now. I knew Milt wasn’t go- 
ing to use her. Tom said he wanted to go over 
to Folly Island to work — draw, I suppose he 
meant ; he said there was such a lot of chattering 
girls in his house that he couldn’t get a minute’s 
peace.” 

“You won’t tell' Milt, Greg?” asked Pheny 
eagerly. “ Don’t let him know where the Tramp 
has gone. But I’m afraid he will find out, and 
row over to Folly Island.” 

“Duff has gone off in his rowboat, and I let 


254 TOM PICKERING OF ’ SCUTNEY, \ 

old Shoemaker have the other, and I don’t really 
think he could get to Folly Island in the scow ; he’ll 
have a chance to work off his temper if he tries.” 

Pheny sat down on the great melon, and drew 
a long, sobbing breath of relief, while Greg went 
off to the threshing-machine in obedience to his 
father’s call. 

“There’s a good stiff breeze blowing ; isn’t there, 
Greg ? The Tramp will be out of sight before 
Milt gets to the shore ! ” Pheny called after him 
hopefully. 

But Milt had already reached the shore, and his 
keen eye had discovered the Tramp. Milt could 
recognize his catboat when she was scarcely more 
than a white speck between the sea and the sky. 
Old Jacob Shoemaker, who had found it too windy 
for fishing, was just rowing up to the pier. 

“ You hadn’t ought to let your boat to that 
four-eyed Pickering feller to go out in alone,” he 
said to Milt, as soon as he came within hailing 
distance. “’Specially when the wind is kind of 
flawy, as ’tis this mornin’. He thinks he can sail 
a boat as slick as a tree-toad can hop ; but he 
don’t know no better than to be pretty resky. 
He said he was a-goin to Folly Island ; an’ there 
he was sprawled out in the bottom of the boat, 
with the sheet fastened, an’ not a stitch took in ! 
He’ll find Folly Island quicker’n he’s a-thinkin’ to, 
if I don’t miss my guess.” 


IN PURSUIT 


255 


“ Let him upset; who cares?” muttered Milt. 
“ But he shall answer to me for what he has done 
first ! ” he added fiercely, pushing off the rowboat 
that the old man had left, and leaping into it. 

“ Something has gone consid’able acrost his 
grain,” remarked old Jacob Shoemaker to himself, 
as he saw Milt, regardless of the rising waves, 
pull rapidly out from the shore in pursuit of the 
distant catboat. 


256 TOM PICKERING OF 'SCUTNEY. 


CHAPTER XXVII. 


ON FOLLY ISLAND. 


ROM the highest knoll in the orchard, Pheny 



1. saw Milt set out in his rowboat. She knew 
that he was following Tom Pickering to Folly 
Island, and she was wild with anxiety. She ran 
toward the shore, frantically calling Milt’s name, 
although he was far out of hearing. Oh ! was 
there no one to help, no way to stop Milt, or 
soften his anger before he met Tom Pickering? 

Milt was finding it slow and hard rowing, in a 
wind that was tossing the waves into whitecaps, 
and beating him back as with a mighty hand — 
the hand of Providence, Pheny might have thought. 
His wrath was having plenty of time to cool, as 
Greg had prophesied that it would if he tried the 
scow ; but nevertheless it still burned hotly. 

He took a straight course to Folly Island, while 
Tom was forced to tack. “I’ll be there to wel- 
come him ! ” he said to himself grimly. When he 
drew his boat up on the beach of Folly Island the 
Tramp was not far off. He landed on the op- 
posite side of the island from that which Tom 


ON FOLLY ISLAND. 


25 7 


was evidently trying to make. “ If he sees me 
he probably won’t come here,” he said to himself, 
feeling that it would be more than he could endure 
to miss the opportunity of facing the traitor then 
and there. 

“ He can bring her in on this tack if he knows 
enough,” he said to himself, watching eagerly 
from behind a rock, as the Tramp was beaten and 
buffeted by the wind, the flapping of her sails com- 
ing to his ears above all the noise of the waves. 
“ He ought to know enough to reef, but I think 
the Tramp will weather it.” Through Milt’s in- 
tense absorption ran a half-conscious pride in the 
sturdy little Tramp. 

But the boat was brought into her homeward 
tack with too sharp a turn ; the wind struck her 
what the fishermen about Sandy Beach called “a 
clean smack.” 

“ She’s bottom upward ! ” gasped Milt. It had 
happened so suddenly that he felt as if he were 
dreaming. “ He’s gone down ; he must be under 
her,” he said to himself calmly. A certain exult- 
ant feeling came next. His vengeance had not 
been needed ; a swifter and more terrible retribu- 
tion had overtaken his enemy! A certain vague 
disappointment mingled* with his triumph. “ I 
shall never tell him now that I knew him for 
just what he was!” 

Suddenly a dark object appeared upon the sur- 


258 TOM PICKERING OF ’ SCUTNEY 

face, a few rods from the overturned boat, and a 
despairing cry for help came to Milt’s ears. He 
thought afterward that he should never cease to 
hear that cry. But he stood as motionless as the 
gray old bowlder upon which he leaned ; although 
he could feel the blood rushing to his head, and 
his heart beating like a trip-hammer. 

“He will come up three times,” he said aloud 
and distinctly, with a vague astonishment at the 
sound of his own voice. “ Just three times, for I 
am sure he cannot swim a stroke, and then ” — 

The spell that held Milt broke suddenly ; no 
one can say how or why. It may have been Pheny 
who exorcised it, — Pheny, pacing up and down 
the shore, saying over and over her pitiful little 
prayer that her boys might be kept from fight- 
ing. Milt started as if he were springing away 
from himself, with a shuddering horror. Down 
over the rocks he went to the place where he had 
left his boat. He had tied the rope around a 
stone ; but the force of wind and wave had pulled 
it off, and the boat was dipping up and down upon 
the waves so far away that it looked a tiny speck. 


MILT SPEAKS HIS MIND . 


259 


CHAPTER XXVIII. 

MILT SPEAKS HIS MIND. 

M ILT could swim but slowly in that sea ; it 
was doubtful whether he could reach the 
spot where Tom had gone down. Another re- 
vulsion of feeling came over him as he plunged 
into the waves — to lose his life, perhaps, for that 
sneak ? 

It was lost again in the nobler feeling and in 
‘‘the joy of the battle” to the strong swimmer. 
He shouted encouragingly* in response to another 
agonized cry for help ; it was a feebler cry, and 
he knew that when another came it would be the 
last. That fellow hadn’t really lost his senses 
when he seized him — as he went down for the 
last time. He obeyed Milt’s sharp command to 
keep his arms to himself, and not grasp him around 
the neck; he even murmured huskily, “Throw 
me off if you feel yourself sinking. I’m not worth 
saving, anyway ! ” 

Milt could hardly believe that he heard aright. 
He had a vague feeling that the awfulness of the 
struggle, the ringing in his ears, the sense of 


26 o 


TOM PICKERING OF 'SCUTNEY. 


suffocation, had turned his brain ; this was some- 
thing that he was reading in a book, something 
that a hero said. That miserable thief would 
cling to life whoever might lose it for him ! One 
more of those dreadful struggles, and then it was 
the solid ground beneath them both ; but it was 
Milt who gave out then, who slipped down into 
a merciful gulf of oblivion, and the other fellow 
was working over him, rubbing him, trying to 
breathe the breath of life into him. When he 
came to himself, Milt wrenched himself out of his 
grasp fiercely. 

“ Look here ! I don’t want any of that,” he 
murmured huskily. “ I don’t want you helping 
me ! I know what you’ve been up to ! I know 
who it was that sneaked into the old tool-house 
after my prize design. I know you’ve been sneak- 
ing ’round trying to steal my idea for weeks ! I 
didn’t come over here to keep you from drowning, 
I can tell you ; I came to have it out with you, and 
your getting a ducking isn’t going to hinder me, 
either ! ” 

Milt stood upright on the rock to which Tom 
had dragged him ; the color rushed to his pale 
face, and he clinched his fist and looked a threat- 
ening, though a still somewhat limp and dripping, 
figure ; and the other boy shrank visibly. 

“ I came over here to have it out with myself,” 
he said. “You can’t say anything harder to me 


p 260 Tom and Milton on Polly Island. 


















































































MILT SPEAKS HIS MIND. 


26l 


than what I think of myself ! — and what a fellow 
thinks of himself, when he gets his eyes wide 
open, is a good deal harder to bear than what any- 
body can say to him. The other fellow may be 
mistaken — he’s apt to get a little off the track, 
and so gives you a chance to stand up for your- 
self ; but you — you can’t help knowing just how 
it is with you inside.” 

Tom’s voice trembled. Milt’s clinched fist 
dropped, and he looked at him curiously. 

“ I’m not so mean altogether, you know,” pur- 
sued Tom. “ I have to push down something 
better in me to be so ; but — I’m ambitious and — 
and your idea was better than mine, a great deal 
better. And I said to myself that you wouldn’t 
know how to use it, from lack of training. You 
have the talent, you know, but I’ve had the chance ; 
things work so queerly in this world ! ” 

“ So — so you thought you had a right to steal 
it ! ” cried Milt with ringing scorn. 

“ I persuaded myself that I had,” returned the 
other calmly. “ I went into that old tool-house 
and looked at it.” 

“ Looked at it ! ” echoed Milt in wrath and 
scorn. 

“ I didn’t mean to copy , you know,” the other 
went on, quietly ignoring the interruption ; “ but 
gradually it got to be too much like yours. I 
came over here with my drawing yesterday. I have 


262 


TOM PICKERING OF ’ SCUTNEY 


to go off by myself to settle some things. I tucked 
it away in a crevice of that great rock over there. 
I couldn’t quite bring myself to tear it to pieces ; 
but to-day I came over to do it.” 

He darted away, and came back in a moment 
with his design. Milt had a glimpse of what 
seemed to him a kind of glorified copy of his own 
drawing ; the next instant it was torn into bits 
before his eyes. 

He put out a restraining hand. 

“ I don’t know what good that does, now mine 
is gone too ! ” he said hoarsely. “ If you could 
only have left mine ! I would rather have taken 
the risk, like a man. I know how you improved 
upon it ; but you had your weak points. You took 
away the strength and simplicity ; mine may have 
been crude, but it was strong. If you only hadn’t 
torn it up ! ” 

A boyish, bitter sob tore its way from Milt’s 
bursting heart ; “ or if you’d only done it before,” 
he added, “ so I might have had time to draw 
another.” 

“ I tear your drawing ? ” cried Tom. “ I never 
did that, never ! It may not be much worse than 
what I did, but at least I’m not guilty of that ! I 
had it in my hands, but I put it safely back just 
where you left it. Of course you have a right to 
believe anything of me, but that I never did ! ” 


BACK TO THE SHORE. 


263 


CHAPTER XXIX. 

BACK TO THE SHORE. 

T HERE was an expression of sincerity on 
Tom’s face that forced Milt to believe him. 

“ I never harmed your drawing,” he repeated. 
“ I was tempted when I saw it — thank God it 
was only for a minute ! I don’t think I am so bad 
as that,” he added reflectively ; “ though I have 
been finding out some rather unpleasant things 
about myself. It is destroyed, you say? And 
there isn’t time to draw another ! That’s mighty 
rough on you ! And you thought, you really 
thought, that I did it, and yet you risked your 
life to save mine ! ” 

Milt turned his face away. “ A — a fellow has 
to be decent,” he said gruffly. “ And I came near 
enough to letting you drown — so near ! I — I 
believe you didn’t do it, though it’s very mysteri- 
ous ; and I’m glad you didn’t do it,” added Milt. 

“ If — if you wouldn’t mind shaking hands with 
a fellow who never will be a skulking thief again ” 
— Tom began hesitatingly. And Milt gave his 
hand a hearty, boyish grip. 


264 TOM PICKERING OF 'SCUTNEY. 

It was a relief that it was necessary to return 
to practical affairs, especially to Milt, who had an 
inordinate dislike to “ making a girl ” of him- 
self. 

They were wet, and the wind was chilly, and 
they waved and whistled frantically at a little 
puffing porgy-boat which passed near the island ; 
but her own tremendous whistle drowned theirs, 
and she was too intent upon business to notice 
the waving handkerchiefs. It was a fishing-smack 
which had discovered the overturned Tramp that 
took them off at last, and fortunately picked up 
Milt’s rowboat, so that the boys had the exercise 
of rowing home. 

Milt’s mind was divided between the mystery 
that surrounded the destruction of his drawing 
and the new phase of Tom’s character which made 
him difficult to understand. 

“It was fine, that design of yours,” he said re- 
flectively; “it was a pity to destroy it.” It 
seemed to be easier to talk freely from the fact 
that, as they rowed, their faces were invisible to 
each other. 

“You mustn’t build your house on another 
man’s land, you know,” replied Tom, in a tone 
which was gruff with his effort to conceal his 
emotion. “ It seems too much to bear that you 
should lose yours. Do you know, I think it is 
fine of you to believe me ! I should hardly think 


BACK TO THE SHORE. # 265 

you would,” he added. “ It looks as if I might be 
mean enough to lie.” 

“ You would have to go back to Folly Island to 
have it out with yourself by this time if you had,” 
said Milt, almost jocularly. Nothing but a joke 
would relieve the unendurably strong tension of 
feeling. “It must have been little Jason — that 
imp, as you call him,” he added. But even as he 
spoke, another suspicion flashed into Milt’s mind. 
“ I think that my father may have done it,” he 
said after a pause, with some difficulty. “ He has 
— has had a great deal of trouble, and it has em- 
bittered him. He wants to keep us out of the 
world, at any cost. He has been very anxious 
about my ambition to be something different from 
a farmer or a fisherman. Of course I never told 
him about my drawing, but he may have discov- 
ered it.” 

“ One’s own father ! Well, I should think that 
would be pretty rough!” said Tom sympatheti- 
cally. 

“He is so much to be pitied,” answered Milt, 
with a bit of a break in his voice. “ He has been 
wronged, cruelly wronged,” he added, in his sturdy 
faith which had never questioned his father s inno- 
cence, or asked for proof. 

A sudden recollection came into Tom’s mind of 
the suspicion which he had confided to Luella in 
the early summer. Perhaps Mr. Jecks had been 


266 


TOM PICKERING OF 'SCUTNEY. 


cruelly wronged, and by Tom’s own uncle. He 
had almost forgotten about it : he had persuaded 
himself that it was no affair of his, as he had said 
to Luella ; and although she had made such a fuss 
about it, she had never mentioned it since. He 
almost thought now that Luella ought to have 
done something about it. Was it to be left to 
him ? Must one do such hard things as that ? It 
was wonderful how the idea of duty — to be decent, 
as Milt put it, with his boyish shamefacedness — 
altered all one’s point of view. 


PHENY AND HER FATHER. 


267 


CHAPTER XXX. 

PHENY AND HER FATHER. 

I N the meantime Pheny, watching from the 
shore, had seen Milt steering directly toward 
Folly Island ; and, although she was too far away 
to see the accident to the Tramp , she had seen 
that the catboat did not return from her last out- 
ward tack. 

“Tom may be going to Farwell’s Point instead 
of Folly Island,” she said to herself. 

She felt that she must get some one to go and 
persuade Milt to come back. No one but his 
father could do that. If he would only go ! The 
Meacham boys had just come in with their sail- 
boat, and they would let him take that. She flew 
back to the house, reproaching herself that she 
had wasted so much time. She had hesitated to 
appeal to her father, because it involved the telling 
of Milt’s secret. But of what consequence was 
his secret in the face of such a danger as this ? 
There was no secret, now that his design was de- 
stroyed ! So Pheny said to herself as she rushed 
into the barn, where the thresher whirred with 


268 


TOM PICKERING OF 'SCUTNEY. 


a cheerful noise, and Greg toiled like a boy who 
meant some day to own a great ranch. 

Pheny poured her tale breathlessly into her fa- 
ther’s ears, while he leaned against the machine 
and listened, not sharing her excitement, but look- 
ing older and more weary than she had ever seen 
him. 

“ You must go, for you know Milt’s temper ; and 
who can wonder that he is angry, when he worked 
and worked no matter how tired he was, night 
after night” — ah, well Pheny remembered those 
night watches ! — “ and never having any leisure 
or fun that other boys have, and every cent that 
he could save went for lessons, and he mended up 
his old shoes himself — and oh, it’s hard for a boy 
to struggle like that ! And then to find the de- 
sign torn in pieces — all his work lost, the hope 
that meant so much all gone ! Would you blame 
him if he were furious against the one who did it ? 
O father, come, come ! I don’t know what he 
will do to Tom Pickering ! ” 

What a worn look, what a gray pallor, there was 
on her father’s face, and how still he stood and lis- 
tened, while her quivering, excited voice ran on ! 

“ But Tom Pickering didn’t destroy the design ; 
it was I,” he said quietly at last. 

“ You ? ” gasped Pheny. “ O father, you couldrit 
have done it ! It was Milt’s life.” 

“ Then, I did it none too soon. I have saved 


PHENY AND HER FATHER. 269 

him from the torture of disappointment, or from 
the ruin of success,” said her father calmly, al- 
though his face showed that he was repressing 
strong emotion. 

“ I guess he couldn’t have had much worse tor- 
ture than he has had this morning ! ” said Greg, 
with a touch of resentment. 

“ But he’ll have to fight his way, father, and 
have disappointment and success ! You have to, 
even here in Sandy Beach,” cried Pheny. “It 
must be that we were meant to have them — and 
bear them. And people are not so bad. I didn’t 
have heart-burnings ; I had good times ! Arabella 
says you have good times if you carry them with 
you, and you always can, you know ; and see how 
good the girls were to me ! ” 

“ H’m — good! Pigs couldn’t have helped being,” 
growled Greg, under his breath. 

“ If you did it — oh, I don’t see how you could ! 
— if you did it, you surely ought to try to hinder 
him from fighting Tom Pickering ! ” cried Pheny, 
not to be turned from her purpose. 

“ I don’t think you need to be anxious. He is 
quick-tempered ; but I trust him — I trust my boy 
Milt.” For the first time her father’s voice 
showed signs of the emotion with which he was 
struggling. It had cost him something to destroy 
Milt’s design. 

A flying figure came down the orchard slope. It 


270 TOM PICKERING OF 'SCUTNE Y. 

was Luella Pickering — Luella, quite roused from 
her usual languid grace. Nothing could have hap- 
pened so soon, and yet Pheny’s heart beat fast 
with fear. 

Luella paused, breathless, in the barn-door ; she 
held a letter tightly clasped in both hands, as if 
it were a precious thing. 


A LETTER FROM SOUTH AFRICA. 


CHAPTER XXXI. 


A LETTER FROM SOUTH AFRICA. 

JELLA stood in the doorway of the barn 



JL/ without speaking for a moment. Then she 
said hesitatingly, “ I wanted to find your father 
too ; but I — I was afraid.” And Mr. Jecks smiled 
grimly, and a little sadly, as if it were not alto- 
gether pleasant to know that the young people 
were afraid of him. 

“ I don’t know how to tell it ! ” she went on, 
stammering, her face growing red and white by 
turns. “ Long ago, early in the summer, Tom 
remembered something. It was the old desk in 
your tool-house that made him think of it. He 
said it used to be Uncle Dick’s desk.” 

Pheny was startled by the whiteness of her 
father’s face. He raised his hand, as if to stop 
Luella ; but the girl went on in a firm voice, — 

“ You must listen. You mustn’t think we were 
meddling. Oh, I’m sure you won’t ! You see, 
Uncle Dick belonged to me ; I loved him best 
of anybody when I was little, and I couldn’t 
bear to think that he had done so dreadful a 


272 TOM PICKERING OF 'SCUTNEY. 

thing as to let some one else suffer for his wrong- 
doing.” 

Mr. Jecks was gazing at her now in a kind of 
haggard, distressful wonder. It astonished Pheny 
that she dared to go on. 

“ What Tom remembered was, that we had once 
heard Aunt Margaret cry out that Uncle Dick, and 
not some one else who had been suspected, was 
guilty. We didn’t know what it meant then ; but 
this summer Tom thought what it might be, and 
a good many things made me believe that what 
he thought was true. Uncle Dick went away off 
to South Africa; they said it was for his health, 
but he has never come back. I could believe that 
he had done some wicked thing, — I knew people 
said that he was wild and reckless, — but not that 
he was wicked enough to let some one else 
bear the consequences. Such mean wickedness 
couldn’t be in Uncle Dick. I wrote to him about 
it. I thought the answer would never come, and 
yet it has been a shorter time than usual. Some- 
times it takes three months. He never knew — 
Uncle Dick never knew ! It is just scrawled, he 
was so excited. He had brain-fever ; and when 
he got well they told him that his stepfather had 
paid the money, and the matter was all hushed 
up. And because he was ashamed to come back, 
and there was a business opening there, he stayed 
on. And he says he has tried to hear as little 


A LETTER FROM SOUTH AFRICA. 

as possible from home, for fear of opening old 
wounds, but that no disgrace could cause him 
such suffering as to know that the best friend 
he ever had has suffered in his stead. And he 
says that that friend had no right to do it.” 
Luella paused, either because she felt that she 
had reached a climax, or because she was out of 
breath. 

“ No right ? No ; for my children’s sake I had 
no right. I have felt that since it was too late,” 
murmured Milton Jecks, rather to himself than 
to the young people who were looking at him with 
wondering, sympathetic eyes. 

“ O dear old dad, we haven’t minded so very 
much — it was worst for you ! ” cried Pheny, 
throwing her arms around his neck. 

“It was hard to prove my innocence, and it 
made me desperate that he should be willing to 
throw the guilt upon me,” Mr. Jecks said. “ And 
once, when we were very young, he saved my 
life. I couldn’t forget that. But it was weak ; 
for my children’s sake I should have resisted.” 

“ Uncle Dick’s coming home ! It will be all 
right now. I knew he was not like that ! ” cried 
Luella, with a proud ring in her voice. “ Papa 
walked the floor when I told him. He is proud, 
you know. But he didn’t scold me, as Tom said 
he would if I wrote. Papa is honest and true 
— a true gentleman. He said he was glad, and 


274 


TOM PICKERING OF ’SCUTNEY. 


that he blamed himself bitterly — bitterly ; that 
was exactly what he said. No, it wasn’t good 
of me to write, Pheny ; I couldn’t help it. I 
couldn’t bear to think that Uncle Dick was like 
that!” 


NEW HOPES. 


275 


CHAPTER XXXII. 

NEW HOPES. 

D R PICKERING’S tall figure loomed above his 
daughter’s head in the barn doorway. 

“ The youngsters seem to be having things 
their own way this summer,” he said, with an effort 
at ease which his voice did not carry out. And then 
he approached the other man, who looked as if he 
neither saw nor heard. “ I had nothing but a 
suspicion — and he was my only brother. If you 
could give me your hand, Jecks,” he said. “Be- 
lieve me, I shall not count the cost of anything 
that will set things right.” 

There was only a slight hesitation, and then 
the two men’s hands met in a firm clasp. There 
were no words said, but Pheny’s keen and loving 
eyes saw that her father’s face was transformed. 
He stood straighter, also, as if a burden had fallen 
from him. He would be “a man again among 
men,” as Milt had hoped. 

But oh, poor Milt ! The recollection brought 
Pheny a sharp pang. She would not say anything 
of her fears to Dr. Pickering and Luella : it seemed 


276 TOM PICKERING OF 'SCUTNEY. 

disloyal to expose Milt’s infirmity ; but as soon 
as they had gone she persuaded her father to go 
with her to the beach. The Meacham boys’ boat 
might be there still. Her father’s face had 
changed painfully at the mention of Milt ; he was 
blaming himself deeply, she knew. It was hard 
that Milt’s disappointment should mar this great 
happiness. 

“ Couldn’t he draw another in time, Pheny ? ” 
he said, with almost pitiful eagerness. “ I thought 
it was for the best ; but I see now that I was wrong 
— all wrong.” 

“ There are only three days before the exami- 
nation, and it takes Milt so long because of his 
lack of training. He said that a skilful artist 
could easily enough, but for him it would be im- 
possible. But don’t feel so distressed, father ! 
This good news may make him forget all about 
it,” said Pheny, trying to be consoling, although 
only she knew how deeply rooted were Milt’s 
hopes. 

“ So much for your fears ! ” cried her father 
suddenly. 

Two boys were coming up from the shore, and 
one had his arm over the other’s shoulder in most 
friendly fashion. 

“ Pinch me, dear old dad, for I think I’m dream- 
ing!” cried Pheny, as she recognized Milt and 
Tom Pickering. 


NEW HOPES. 


2 77 

They separated, and Milt came hurriedly toward 
them. “Tom got upset in the Tramp. We’re 
going to recover her. Where’s Greg?” he said. 

Pheny took in his wet and dishevelled condition 
at a glance. “He would have drowned if you 
hadn’t saved him ! ” she cried. “ It was just like 
you, Milt. And, O Milt ! he didn’t do it.” 

A sharp spasm of pain crossed Milt’s strong 
young face as he looked at his father. 

“ I was mistaken. I was wrong. Forgive me, 
Milt,” said the older man. 

“ Never mind, father. I shall do better next 
time,” said Milt, making an evident effort to speak 
cheerfully. “But you’ll never make a farmer of 
me, you know.” 

Pheny poured out the great news of how Luella 
Pickering had come to the rescue. 

“ You don’t think I can feel badly for anything 
now, dad ? ” cried Milt radiantly. 

“Ah, but if I hadn’t dashed your hopes, my 
boy!” said his father regretfully. 

Arabella was calling little Jason from the back 
door with a disturbed and angry face. 

“ That young one acts like all possessed ! ” she 
exclaimed. “ He’s stickin’ to that tool-house, an 
won’t come out for his victuals nor nothin , be- 
cause he says he’s got something hid away there 
that folks has got to give him half a dollar for. 
It’s hard when you can’t keep folks from spilin’ 


278 TOM PICKERING OF 'SCUTNEY. 

your own young one. That pore innercent wasn’t 
all ate up with greed for half-dollars till folks put 
it into his head ! ” 

“What is it that he has, Arabella?” asked Milt, 
a flush rising to his forehead. 

“ Oh, land ! I guess it ain’t no great,” said little 
Jason’s mother impatiently. “As near as I could 
find out, it’s a drawrin’ of yourn that he’s got done 
up in a newspaper.” Milt rushed off to the tool- 
house. Pheny followed him, thrilling with a vague 
hope which something in her brother’s face had 
inspired. 


TOM'S OPINION OF THINGS. 


279 


CHAPTER XXXIII. 

tom’s opinion of things. 

I DON’T know why I didn’t think,” gasped 
Milt as he ran to the tool-house. “ I thought 
it was Tom Pickering at first, and of course he 
would know the right one. I slipped it into a 
newspaper ; it was the first thing in the desk. 
Father may have got the one that he destroyed 
out of the portfolio — the last copy, you know.” 

Little Jason, ensconced with grim determination 
under the carpenter’s bench, was summarily dis- 
possessed of his treasure. Milt held it up before 
Pheny’s eyes, with a long, long breath, which 
would have been a sob if Milt had not scorned to 
be “ girly,” — the precious design which now, in 
less than an hour, should be on its way to the 
prize competition. 

“ It’s too good to be true ! I didn’t know that 
things ever did happen so in this world,” cried 
Pheny. That was after they had all talked over 
the great good fortune together in the living- 
room. 

But from without came prolonged howls — little 


280 


TOM PICKERING OF ’SCUTNEY. 


Jason’s, increased by the application of the exas- 
perated maternal hand. Pheny ran to the rescue. 

“ The little beggar is only getting his deserts,” 
said Greg philosophically. 

“ But I can’t bear it to-day. What if we all got 
our deserts ? ” said Pheny. 

“ That’s it. What if we all did ? ” echoed Milt, 
nodding gravely, and thinking of the moment 
when he had heard what he thought was Tom 
Pickering’s last cry for fyelp. 

That competitive examination took nearly a 
month. Tom carried the news to his Aunt Esther 
and Luella as they sat upon the piazza on a soft 
September afternoon. Milt had just parted from 
him, and they had caught a glimpse of his beam- 
ing face. 

“He has won the prize, Tom. I saw it in his 
face ! ” cried Luella. 

“No he hasn’t. It was Everard Fales, who was 
brought up in an architect’s office, who won it. 
But what do you think ? The committee saw such 
evidences of talent in Milt’s design, that they per- 
suaded Captain Tremaine to give him the schol- 
arship too ; and afterward, if he deserves it, the 
captain will send him abroad. He has everything 
but the glory, and that he didn’t seem to care a 
snap about. He’s a queer fellow,” added Tom 
meditatively, “ but I think the finest fellow I ever 


TOM'S OPINION OF THINGS. 28 1 

“ I’m sorry they’re going up to town before us,” 
remarked Luella ; “but Mr. Jecks has a promising 
business opening. And we shall all be here again 
next summer, I hope. Mr. Jecks wouldn’t part 
with the old farm for anything, though he doesn’t 
expect to bring his sons up there. It seems 
strange that things should have turned out so 
beautifully when I began by being so horrid. It 
was just because Pheny Jecks was so good and 
sweet.” 

“And Milt such a noble fellow,” amended Tom. 

“ And perhaps there was a little leaven of good- 
ness elsewhere,” suggested Aunt Esther. 

So the world wags, its mass of sin and misery 
leavened constantly by sweetness and self-sacrifice. 
And Arabella and Pheny expect that some day 
even little Jason may reform. 

As for Tom Pickering, he goes on his way 
toward manhood better equipped for facing the 
world because of his experiences with Macurdy 
Green, with Minty Round, — though she was only 
a girl, — and with Milton Jecks, — especially with 
Milton Jecks. He has confided to Luella that in 
getting acquainted with them he first made the 
acquaintance of Tom Pickering ; and, as every 
one knows, it is a great thing for a boy to get 
acquainted with himself, and to understand, so far 
as any of us may, the good and the evil, the 
strength and the weakness, of his own nature. 


282 


TOM PICKERING OF ’ SCUTNEY , i 


So, whether he is an editor with Macurdy 
Green, or a famous architect, — already there is a 
plan formed for a partnership between him and 
Milton Jecks, — he means, first and foremost, to 
be above any mean or dishonorable act, — “ lord 
of himself whate’er befall.” 













































